Chapter I: Part 1

The Mysterious Mr. Quin

Agatha Christie

_Copyright 1930 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc._
_Copyright © renewed 1958 by Agatha Christie Mallowan._

CONTENTS

THE COMING OF MR. QUIN
THE SHADOW ON THE GLASS
AT THE BELLS AND MOTLEY
THE SIGN IN THE SKY
THE SOUL OF THE CROUPIER
THE WORLD'S END
THE VOICE IN THE DARK
THE FACE OF HELEN
THE DEAD HARLEQUIN
THE BIRD WITH THE BROKEN WING
THE MAN FROM THE SEA
HARLEQUIN'S LANE

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. QUIN

THE COMING OF MR. QUIN

It was New Year's Eve. The elder members of the house party at Royston were assembled in the big hall.

Mr. Satterthwaite was glad that the young people had gone to bed. He was not fond of young people in herds. He thought them uninteresting and crude. They lacked subtlety and as life went on he had become increasingly fond of subtleties.

Mr. Satterthwaite was sixty-two--a little bent, dried-up man with a peering face oddly elflike, and an intense and inordinate interest in other people's lives. All his life, so to speak, he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him. His role had always been that of the onlooker. Only now, with old age holding him in its clutch, he found himself increasingly critical of the drama submitted to him. He demanded now something a little out of the common.

There was no doubt that he had a flair for these things. He knew instinctively when the elements of drama were at hand. Like a war horse, he sniffed the scent. Since his arrival at Royston this afternoon, that strange inner sense of his had stirred and bid him be ready. Something interesting was happening or going to happen.

The house party was not a large one. There was Tom Evesham, their genial good-humored host, and his serious political wife, who had been before her marriage Lady Laura Keene. There was Sir Richard Conway, soldier, traveler, and sportsman, there were six or seven young people whose names Mr. Satterthwaite had not grasped, and there were the Portals.

It was the Portals who interested Mr. Satterthwaite.

He had never met Alec Portal before but he knew all about him, had known his father and his grandfather. Alec Portal ran pretty true to type. He was a man of close on forty, fair-haired, and blue-eyed like all the Portals, fond of sport, good at games, devoid of imagination. Nothing unusual about Alec Portal. The usual good, sound English stock.

But his wife was different. She was, Mr. Satterthwaite knew, an Australian. Portal had been out in Australia two years ago, had met her out there, and had married her and brought her home. She had never been to England previous to her marriage. All the same, she wasn't at all like any other Australian woman Mr. Satterthwaite had met.

He observed her now covertly. Interesting woman--very. So still, and yet so--alive. Alive! That was just it! Not exactly beautiful--no, you wouldn't call her beautiful, but there was a kind of calamitous magic about her that you couldn't miss--that no man could miss. The masculine side of Mr. Satterthwaite spoke there, but the feminine side (for Mr. Satterthwaite had a large share of femininity), was equally interested in another question: Why did Mrs. Portal dye her hair?

No other man would probably have known that she dyed her hair, but Mr. Satterthwaite knew. He knew all those things. And it puzzled him. Many dark women dye their hair blond; he had never before come across a fair woman who dyed her hair black.

Everything about her intrigued him. In a queer intuitive way, he felt certain that she was either very happy or very unhappy--but he didn't know which, and it annoyed him not to know. Furthermore, there was the curious effect she had upon her husband.

_He adores her_, said Mr. Satterthwaite to himself, _but sometimes he's--yes, afraid of her! That's very interesting. That's uncommonly interesting._

Portal drank too much. That was certain. And he had a curious way of watching his wife when she wasn't looking.

_Nerves_, said Mr. Satterthwaite. _The fellow's all nerves. She knows it too, but she won't do anything about it._

He felt very curious about the pair of them. Something was going on that he couldn't fathom.

He was roused from his meditations on the subject by the solemn chiming of a big clock.

"Twelve o'clock," said Evesham. "New Year's Day. Happy New Year--everybody. As a matter of fact, that clock's five minutes fast. I don't know why the children wouldn't wait up and see the New Year in."

"I don't suppose for a minute they've really gone to bed," said his wife placidly. "They're probably putting hairbrushes or something in our beds. That sort of thing does so amuse them. I can't think why. We should never have been allowed to do such a thing in my young day."

"_Autre temps, autre moeurs_," said Conway, smiling.

He was a tall soldierly-looking man. Both he and Evesham were much of the same type--honest, upright, kindly men with no great pretensions to brains.

"In my young days we all joined hands in a circle and sang 'Auld Lang Syne,'" continued Lady Laura. "'Should auld acquaintance be forgot'--so touching, I always think the words are."

Evesham moved uneasily. "Oh! drop it, Laura," he muttered. "_Not here!_"

He strode across the wide hall where they were sitting, and switched on an extra light.

"Very stupid of me," said Lady Laura, _sotto voce_. "Reminds him of poor Mr. Capel, of course. My dear, is the fire too hot for you?"

Eleanor Portal had made a brusque movement. "Thank you. I'll move my chair back a little."

What a lovely voice she had--one of those low, murmuring, echoing voices that stay in your memory, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. Her face was in shadow now. What a pity.

From her place in the shadow she spoke again. "Mr.--Capel?"

"Yes. The man who originally owned this house. He shot himself, you know. Oh! very well, Tom dear, I won't speak of it unless you like. It was a great shock for Tom, of course, because he was here when it happened. So were you, weren't you, Sir Richard?"

"Yes, Lady Laura."

An old grandfather clock in the corner groaned, wheezed, snorted asthmatically, and then struck twelve.

"Happy New Year," grunted Evesham perfunctorily.

Lady Laura wound up her knitting with some deliberation. "Well, we've seen the New Year in," she observed, and added, looking toward Mrs. Portal, "What do you think, my dear?"

Eleanor Portal rose quickly to her feet. "Bed, by all means," she said lightly.

_She's very pale_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite, as he too rose, and began busying himself with candlesticks. _She's not usually as pale as that._

He lighted her candle and handed it to her with a funny little old-fashioned bow. She took it from him with a word of acknowledgment, and went slowly up the stairs.

Suddenly a very odd impulse swept over Mr. Satterthwaite. He wanted to go after her--to reassure her--he had the strangest feeling that she was in danger of some kind. The impulse died down, and he felt ashamed. _He_ was getting nervy too.

She hadn't looked at her husband as she went up the stairs, but now she turned her head over her shoulder and gave him a long, searching glance which had a queer intensity in it. It affected Mr. Satterthwaite very oddly.

He found himself saying good night to his hostess in quite a flustered manner.

"I'm sure I hope it _will_ be a happy New Year," Lady Laura was saying. "But the political situation seems to me to be fraught with grave uncertainty."

"I'm sure it is," said Mr. Satterthwaite earnestly. "I'm sure it is."

"I only hope," continued Lady Laura, without the least change of manner, "that it will be a dark man who first crosses the threshold. You know that superstition, I suppose, Mr. Satterthwaite? No? You surprise me. To bring luck to the house it must be a dark man who first steps over the door step on New Year's Day. Dear me, I hope I shan't find anything _very_ unpleasant in my bed. I never trust the children. They have such very high spirits."

Shaking her head in sad foreboding, Lady Laura moved majestically up the staircase.

With the departure of the women, chairs were pulled in closer round the blazing logs on the big open hearth.

"Say when," said Evesham, hospitably, as he held up the whisky decanter.

When everybody had said when, the talk reverted to the subject which had been tabooed before.

"You knew Derek Capel, didn't you, Satterthwaite?" asked Conway.

"Slightly--yes."

"And you, Portal?"

"No, I never met him."

So fiercely and defensively did he say it that Mr. Satterthwaite looked up in surprise.

"I always hate it when Laura brings up the subject," said Evesham slowly. "After the tragedy, you know, this place was sold to a big manufacturer fellow. He cleared out after a year--didn't suit him or something. A lot of tommyrot was talked about the place being haunted, of course, and it gave the house a bad name. Then, when Laura got me to stand for West Kidleby, of course it meant living up in these parts, and it wasn't so easy to find a suitable house. Royston was going cheap, and--well, in the end I bought it. Ghosts are all tommyrot, but all the same one doesn't exactly care to be reminded that you're living in a house where one of your own friends shot himself. Poor old Derek--we shall never know why he did it."

"He won't be the first or the last fellow who's shot himself without being able to give a reason," said Alec Portal heavily.

He rose and poured himself out another drink, splashing the whisky in with a liberal hand.

_There's something very wrong with him_, said Mr. Satterthwaite, to himself. _Very wrong indeed. I wish I knew what it was all about._

"Gad!" said Conway. "Listen to the wind. It's a wild night."

"A good night for ghosts to walk," said Portal with a reckless laugh. "All the devils in hell are abroad tonight."

"According to Lady Laura, even the blackest of them would bring us luck," observed Conway, with a laugh. "Hark to that!"

The wind rose in another terrific wail, and as it died away there came three loud knocks on the big nailed doorway.

Everyone started.

"Who on earth can that be at this time of night?" cried Evesham.

They stared at each other.

"I will open it," said Evesham. "The servants have gone to bed."

He strode across to the door, fumbled a little over the heavy bars, and finally flung it open. An icy blast of wind came sweeping into the hall.

Framed in the doorway stood a man's figure, tall and slender. To Mr. Satterthwaite, watching, he appeared, by some curious effect of the stained glass above the door, to be dressed in every color of the rainbow. Then, as he stepped forward, he showed himself to be a thin dark man.

"I must really apologize for this intrusion," said the stranger, in a pleasant, level voice. "But my car broke down. Nothing much, my chauffeur is putting it to rights, but it will take half an hour or so, and it is so confoundedly cold outside--"

He broke off, and Evesham took up the thread quickly.

"I should think it was. Come in and have a drink. We can't give you any assistance about the car, can we?"

"No, thanks. My man knows what to do. By the way, my name is Quin--Harley Quin."

"Sit down, Mr. Quin," said Evesham. "Sir Richard Conway, Mr. Satterthwaite, Mr. Portal. My name is Evesham."

Mr. Quin acknowledged the introductions, and dropped into the chair that Evesham had hospitably pulled forward. As he sat, some effect of the firelight threw a bar of shadow across his face which gave almost the impression of a mask.

Evesham threw a couple more logs on the fire. "A drink?"

"Thanks."

Evesham brought it to him and asked as he did so, "Do you know this part of the world well, Mr. Quin?"

"I passed through it some years ago."

"Really?"

"Yes. This house belonged then to a man called Capel."

"Ah! yes," said Evesham. "Poor Derek Capel. You knew him?"

"Yes, I knew him."

Evesham's manner underwent a faint change, almost imperceptible to one who had not studied the English character. Before, it had contained a subtle reserve; now this was laid aside. Mr. Quin had known Derek Capel. He was the friend of a friend, and as such, was vouched for and fully accredited.

"Astounding affair, that," he said confidentially. "We were just talking about it. I can tell you, it went against the grain, buying this place. If there had been anything else suitable, but there wasn't. You see, I was in the house the night he shot himself--so was Conway--and upon my word, I've always expected his ghost to walk."

"A very inexplicable business," said Mr. Quin, slowly and deliberately, and he paused with the air of an actor who has just spoken an important cue.

"You may well say inexplicable," burst in Conway. "The thing's a black mystery--always will be."

"I wonder," said Mr. Quin, noncommittally. "Yes, Sir Richard, you were saying?"

"Astounding--that's what it was. Here's a man in the prime of life, gay, lighthearted, without a care in the world. Five or six old pals staying with him. Top of his spirits at dinner, full of plans for the future. And from the dinner table he goes straight upstairs to his room, takes a revolver from a drawer, and shoots himself. Why? Nobody ever knew. Nobody ever will know."

"Isn't that rather a sweeping statement, Sir Richard?" asked Mr. Quin, smiling.

Conway stared at him. "What d'you mean? I don't understand."

"A problem is not necessarily unsolvable because it has remained unsolved."

"Oh! Come, man, if nothing came out at the time, it's not likely to come out now--ten years afterward?"

Mr. Quin shook his head gently. "I disagree with you. The evidence of history is against you. The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation. It is a question of getting the true perspective, of seeing things in proportion. If you like to call it so, it is, like everything else, a question of relativity."

Alec Portal leaned forward, his face twitching painfully.

"You are right, Mr. Quin," he cried, "you are right. Time does not dispose of a question--it only presents it anew in a different guise."

Evesham was smiling tolerantly. "Then you mean to say, Mr. Quin, that if we were to hold, let us say, a court of inquiry, tonight, into the circumstances of Derek Capel's death, we are as likely to arrive at the truth as we should have been at the time?"

"_More_ likely, Mr. Evesham. The personal equation has largely dropped out, and you will remember facts as facts without seeking to put your own interpretation upon them."

Evesham frowned doubtfully.

"One must have a starting point, of course," said Mr. Quin in his quiet level voice. "A starting point is usually a theory. One of you must have a theory, I am sure. How about you, Sir Richard?"

Conway frowned thoughtfully. "Well, of course," he said apologetically, "we thought--naturally we all thought--that there must be a woman in it somewhere. It's usually either that or money, isn't it? And it certainly wasn't money. No trouble of that description. So--what else could it have been?"

Mr. Satterthwaite started. He had leaned forward to contribute a small remark of his own and, in the act of doing so, he had caught sight of a woman's figure crouched against the balustrade of the gallery above. She was huddled down against it, invisible from everywhere but where he himself sat, and she was evidently listening with strained attention to what was going on below. So immovable was she that he hardly believed the evidence of his own eyes.

But he recognized the pattern of the dress easily enough--an old-world brocade. It was Eleanor Portal.

And suddenly all the events of the night seemed to fall into pattern--Mr. Quin's arrival, no fortuitous chance, but the appearing of an actor when his cue was given. There was a drama being played in the big hall at Royston tonight--a drama none the less real in that one of the actors was dead. Oh! yes, Derek Capel had a part in the play. Mr. Satterthwaite was sure of that.

And, again suddenly, a new illumination came to him. This was Mr. Quin's doing. It was he who was staging the play--was giving the actors their cues. He was at the heart of the mystery pulling the strings, making the puppets work. He knew everything, even to the presence of the woman crouched against the woodwork upstairs. Yes, he knew.

Sitting well back in his chair, secure in his role of audience, Mr. Satterthwaite watched the drama unfold before his eyes. Quietly and naturally, Mr. Quin was pulling the strings, setting his puppets in motion.

"A woman--yes," he murmured thoughtfully. "There was no mention of any woman at dinner?"

"Why, of course," cried Evesham. "He announced his engagement. That's just what made it seem so absolutely mad. Very bucked about it he was. Said it wasn't to be announced just yet--but gave us the hint that he was in the running for the Benedick stakes."

"Of course we all guessed who the lady was," said Conway. "Marjorie Dilke. Nice girl."

It seemed to be Mr. Quin's turn to speak, but he did not do so, and something about his silence seemed oddly provocative. It was as though he challenged the last statement. It had the effect of putting Conway in a defensive position.

"Who else could it have been? Eh, Evesham?"

"I don't know," said Tom Evesham slowly. "What did he say exactly now? Something about being in the running for the Benedick stakes--that he couldn't tell us the lady's name till he had her permission--it wasn't to be announced yet. He said, I remember, that he was a damned lucky fellow. That he wanted his two old friends to know that by that time next year he'd be a happy married man. Of course, we assumed it was Marjorie. They were great friends and he'd been about with her a lot."

"The only thing--" began Conway and stopped.

"What were you going to say, Dick?"

"Well, I mean, it was odd in a way, if it was Marjorie, that the engagement shouldn't be announced at once. I mean, why the secrecy? Sounds more as though it were a married woman--you know, someone whose husband had just died, or who was divorcing him."

"That's true," said Evesham. "If that were the case, of course the engagement couldn't be announced at once. And you know, thinking back about it, I don't believe he had been seeing much of Marjorie. All that was the year before. I remember thinking things seemed to have cooled off between them."

"Curious," said Mr. Quin.

"Yes--looked almost as though someone had come between them."

"Another woman," said Conway thoughtfully.

"By Jove," said Evesham. "You know, there was something almost indecently hilarious about old Derek that night. He looked almost drunk with happiness. And yet--I can't quite explain what I mean--but he looked oddly defiant too."

"Like a man defying Fate," said Alec Portal heavily.

Was it of Derek Capel he was speaking--or was it of himself? Mr. Satterthwaite, looking at him, inclined to the latter view. Yes, that was what Alec Portal represented--a man defying Fate. His imagination, muddled by drink, responded suddenly to that note in the story which recalled his own secret preoccupation.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked up. She was still there. Watching, listening--still motionless, frozen--like a dead woman.

"Perfectly true," said Conway. "Capel _was_ excited--curiously so. I'd describe him as a man who has staked heavily and won against well-nigh overwhelming odds."

"Getting up courage, perhaps, for what he's made up his mind to do?" suggested Portal. And as though moved by an association of ideas, he got up and helped himself to another drink.

"Not a bit of it," said Evesham sharply. "I'd almost swear nothing of that kind was in his mind. Conway's right. A successful gambler who has brought off a long shot and can hardly believe in his own good fortune. That was the attitude."

Conway gave a gesture of discouragement. "And yet," he said, "ten minutes later--"

They sat in silence. Evesham brought his hand down with a bang on the table. "Something must have happened in that ten minutes," he cried. "It must! But what? Let's go over it carefully. We were all talking. In the middle of it Capel got up suddenly and left the room--"

"Why?" said Mr. Quin.

The interruption seemed to disconcert Evesham. "I beg your pardon?"

"I only said, 'Why?'" said Mr. Quin.

Evesham frowned in an effort of memory. "It didn't seem vital--at the time. Oh! of course--the post. Don't you remember that jangling bell, and how excited we were? We'd been snowed up for three days, remember. Biggest snowstorm for years and years. All the roads were impassable. No newspapers, no letters. Capel went out to see if something had come through at last, and got a great pile of things, newspapers and letters. He opened the paper to see if there was any news, and then went upstairs with his letters. Three minutes afterward, we heard a shot. Inexplicable--absolutely inexplicable."

"That's not inexplicable," said Portal. "Of course the fellow got some unexpected news in a letter. Obvious, I should have said."

"Oh! Don't think we missed anything so obvious as that. It was one of the Coroner's first questions. _But Capel never opened one of his letters._ The whole pile lay unopened on his dressing-table."

Portal looked crestfallen. "You're sure he didn't open just one of them? He might have destroyed it after reading it?"

"No, I'm quite positive. Of course, that would have been the natural solution. No, every one of the letters was unopened. Nothing burned--nothing torn up. There was no fire in the room."

Portal shook his head. "Extraordinary."

"It was a ghastly business altogether," said Evesham in a low voice. "Conway and I went up when we heard the shot, and found him. It gave me a shock, I can tell you."

"Nothing to be done but telephone for the police, I suppose?" said Mr. Quin.

"No, luckily enough, the local constable happened to be in the kitchen at the time. One of the dogs--you remember poor old Rover, Conway?--had strayed the day before. A passing carter had found it half-buried in a snowdrift and had taken it to the police station. They recognized it as Capel's, and a dog he was particularly fond of, and the constable came up with it. He'd just arrived a minute before the shot was fired. It saved us some trouble."

"Gad, that was a snowstorm," said Conway reminiscently. "About this time of year, wasn't it? Early January."

"February, I think. Let me see, we went abroad soon afterward."

"I'm pretty sure it was January. My hunter Ned--you remember Ned?--lamed himself the end of January. That was just after this business."

"It must have been quite the end of January then. Funny how difficult it is to recall dates after a lapse of years."

"One of the most difficult things in the world," said Mr. Quin, conversationally. "Unless you can find a landmark in some big public event--an assassination of a crowned head, or a big murder trial."

"Why, of course," cried Conway, "it was just before the Appleton case."

"Just after, wasn't it?"

"No, no, don't you remember? Capel knew the Appletons--he'd stayed with the old man the previous spring--just a week before he died. He was talking of him one night--what an old curmudgeon he was, and how awful it must have been for a young and beautiful woman like Mrs. Appleton to be tied to him. There was no suspicion then that she had done away with him."

"By Jove, you're right. I remember reading the paragraph in the paper saying an exhumation order had been granted. It would have been that same day--I remember only seeing it with half my mind, you know, the other half wondering about poor old Derek lying dead upstairs."

"A common, but very curious phenomenon, that," observed Mr. Quin. "In moments of great stress, the mind focuses itself upon some quite unimportant matter which is remembered long afterward with the utmost fidelity, driven in, as it were, by the mental stress of the moment. It may be some quite irrelevant detail, like the pattern of a wallpaper, but it will never be forgotten."

"Rather extraordinary, your saying that, Mr. Quin," said Conway. "Just as you were speaking, I suddenly felt myself back in Derek Capel's room--with Derek lying dead on the floor. I saw as plainly as possible the big tree outside the window, and the shadow it threw upon the snow outside. Yes, the moonlight, the snow, and the shadow of the tree--I can see them again this minute. By Gad, I believe I could draw them, and yet I never realized I was looking at them at the time."

"His room was the big one over the porch, was it not?" asked Mr. Quin.

"Yes, and the tree was the big beech, just at the angle of the drive."

Mr. Quin nodded, as though satisfied. Mr. Satterthwaite was curiously thrilled. He was convinced that every word, every reflection of Mr. Quin's voice was pregnant with purpose. He was driving at something--exactly what Mr. Satterthwaite did not know, but he was quite convinced as to whose was the master hand.

There was a momentary pause, and then Evesham reverted to the preceding topic. "That Appleton case, I remember it very well now. What a sensation it made. She got off, didn't she? Pretty woman, very fair--remarkably fair."

Almost against his will, Mr. Satterthwaite's eyes sought the kneeling figure up above. Was it his fancy, or did he see it shrink a little, as though at a blow? Did he see a hand slide upward to the tablecloth--and then pause?

There was a crash of falling glass. Alec Portal, helping himself to whisky, had let the decanter slip. "I say--damn' sorry. Can't think what came over me."

Evesham cut short his apologies. "Quite all right. Quite all right, my dear fellow. Curious--that smash reminded me. That's what she did, didn't she? Mrs. Appleton? Smashed the port decanter?"

"Yes. Old Appleton had his glass of port--only one--each night. The day after his death, one of the servants saw her take the decanter out and smash it deliberately. That set them talking, of course. They all knew she had been perfectly wretched with him. Rumor grew and grew, and in the end, months later, some of his relatives applied for an exhumation order. And sure enough, the old fellow had been poisoned. Arsenic, wasn't it?"

"No--strychnine, I think. It doesn't much matter. Well, of course, there it was. Only one person was likely to have done it. Mrs. Appleton stood her trial. She was acquitted more through the lack of evidence against her than from any overwhelming proof of innocence. In other words, she was lucky. Yes, I don't suppose there's much doubt she did it right enough. What happened to her afterward?"

"Went out to Canada, I believe. Or was it Australia? She had an uncle or something of the sort out there who offered her a home. Best thing she could do under the circumstances."

Mr. Satterthwaite was fascinated by Alec Portal's right hand as it clasped his glass. How tightly he was gripping it.

_You'll smash that in a minute or two, if you're not careful_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. _Dear me, how interesting all this is._

Evesham rose and helped himself to a drink. "Well, we're not much nearer to knowing why poor Derek Capel shot himself," he remarked. "The court of inquiry hasn't been a great success, has it, Mr. Quin?"

Mr. Quin laughed. It was a strange laugh, mocking--yet sad. It made everyone jump.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "You are still living in the past, Mr. Evesham. You are still hampered by your preconceived notion. But I, the man from outside, the stranger passing by, see only--facts!"

"Facts?"

"Yes--facts."

"What do you mean?" said Evesham.

"I see a clear sequence of facts, outlined by yourselves, but of which you have not seen the significance. Let us go back ten years and look at what we see--untrammeled by ideas or sentiment."

Mr. Quin had risen. He looked very tall. The fire leaped fitfully behind him. He spoke in a low compelling voice. "You are at dinner. Derek Capel announces his engagement. You think then it was to Marjorie Dilke. You are not so sure now. He has the restlessly excited manner of a man who has successfully defied Fate--who, in your own words, has pulled off a big coup against overwhelming odds. Then comes the clanging of the bell. He goes out to get the long overdue mail. He doesn't open his letters, but you mention yourselves that _he opened the paper to glance at the news_. It is ten years ago--so we cannot know what the news was that day--a far-off earthquake, a near-at-hand political crisis? The only thing we do know about the contents of that paper is that it contained one small paragraph--_a paragraph stating that the Home Office had given permission to exhume the body of Mr. Appleton three days ago_."

"What?"

Mr. Quin went on: "Derek Capel goes up to his room, and there he sees something out of the window. Sir Richard Conway has told us that the curtain was not drawn across it and further that it gave on the drive. What did he see? What could he have seen that forced him to take his life?"

"What do you mean? What did he see?"

"I think," said Mr. Quin, "that he saw a policeman. A policeman who had come about a dog. But Derek Capel didn't know that--he just saw--a policeman."

There was a long silence--as though it took some time to drive the inference home.

"My God!" whispered Evesham at last. "You can't mean that? Appleton? But he wasn't there at the time Appleton died. The old man was alone with his wife--"

"But he may have been there a week earlier. Strychnine is not very soluble unless it is in the form of the hydrochloride. The greater part of it, put into the port, would be taken in the last glass, perhaps a week after he left."

Portal sprang forward. His voice was hoarse and his eyes bloodshot. "Why did she break the decanter?" he cried. "Why did she break the decanter? Tell me that."

For the first time that evening, Mr. Quin addressed himself to Mr. Satterthwaite. "You have a wide experience of life, Mr. Satterthwaite. Perhaps you can tell us that."

Mr. Satterthwaite's voice trembled a little. His cue had come at last. He was to speak some of the most important lines in the play. He was an actor now--not a looker-on.

"As I see it," he murmured modestly, "she--cared for Derek Capel. She was, I think, a good woman--and she had sent him away. When her husband--died, she suspected the truth. And so, to save the man she loved, she tried to destroy the evidence against him. Later, I think, he persuaded her that her suspicions were unfounded, and she consented to marry him. But even then, she hung back--women, I fancy, have a lot of instinct."

Mr. Satterthwaite had spoken his part.

Suddenly a long trembling sigh filled the air.

"My God!" cried Evesham, starting, "what was that?"

Mr. Satterthwaite could have told him that it was Eleanor Portal in the gallery above, but he was too artistic to spoil a good effect.

Mr. Quin was smiling. "My car will be ready by now. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Evesham. I have, I hope, done something for my friend."

They stared at him in blank amazement.

"That aspect of the matter has not struck you? He loved this woman, you know. Loved her enough to commit murder for her sake. When retribution overtook him, as he mistakenly thought, he took his own life. But, unwittingly, he left her to face the music."

"She was acquitted," muttered Evesham.

"Because the case against her could not be proved. I fancy--it may be only a fancy--that she is still--facing the music."

Portal had sunk into a chair, his face buried in his hands.

Quin turned to Satterthwaite. "Good-by, Mr. Satterthwaite. You are interested in the drama, are you not?"

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded--surprised.

"I must recommend the harlequinade to your attention. It is dying out nowadays--but it repays attention, I assure you. Its symbolism is a little difficult to follow--but the immortals are always immortal, you know. I wish you all good night."

They saw him stride out into the dark. As before, the colored glass gave the effect of motley.

Mr. Satterthwaite went upstairs. He went to draw down his window, for the air was cold. The figure of Mr. Quin moved down the drive, and from a side door came a woman's figure, running. For a moment they spoke together, then she retraced her steps to the house. She passed just below the window, and Mr. Satterthwaite was struck anew by the vitality of her face. She moved now like a woman in a happy dream.

"Eleanor!"

Alec Portal had joined her.

"Eleanor, forgive me--forgive me. You told me the truth, but God forgive me--I did not quite believe--"

Mr. Satterthwaite was intensely interested in other people's affairs, but he was also a gentleman. It was borne in upon him that he must shut the window. He did so.

But he shut it very slowly.

He heard her voice, exquisite and indescribable. "I know--I know. You have been in hell. So was I once. Loving--yet alternately believing and suspecting--thrusting aside one's doubts and having them spring up again with leering faces. I know, Alec, I know. But there is a worse hell than that, the hell I have lived in with you. I have seen your doubt--your fear of me--poisoning all our love. That man, that chance passer-by, saved me. I could bear it no longer, you understand. Tonight--tonight I was going to kill myself--Alec--Alec!"

THE SHADOW ON THE GLASS

"Listen to this," said Lady Cynthia Drage.

She read aloud from the journal she held in her hand. "'Mr. and Mrs. Unkerton are entertaining a party at Greenways House this week. Among the guests are Lady Cynthia Drage, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Scott, Major Porter, D.S.O., Mrs. Staverton, Captain Allenson, and Mr. Satterthwaite.'"

"It's as well," remarked Lady Cynthia, casting away the paper, "to know what we're in for. But they _have_ made a mess of things!"

Her companion, that same Mr. Satterthwaite whose name figured at the end of the list of guests, looked at her interrogatively. It had been said that if Mr. Satterthwaite was found at the houses of those rich who had newly arrived, it was a sign either that the cooking was unusually good, or that a drama of human life was to be enacted there. Mr. Satterthwaite was abnormally interested in the comedies and tragedies of his fellow men.

Lady Cynthia, who was a middle-aged woman, with a hard face and a liberal allowance of makeup, tapped him smartly with the newest thing in parasols which lay rakishly across her knee.

"Don't pretend you don't understand me. You do perfectly. What's more, I believe you're here on purpose to see the fur fly!"

Mr. Satterthwaite protested vigorously. He didn't know what she was talking about.

"I'm talking about Richard Scott. Do you pretend you've never heard of him?"

"No, of course not. He's the big-game man, isn't he?"

"That's it--'Great big bears and tigers, etc.,' as the song says. Of course, he's a great lion himself just now--the Unkertons would naturally be mad to get hold of him--_and_ the bride! A charming child--oh! quite a charming child--but so naïve, only twenty, you know, and he must be at least forty-five."

"Mrs. Scott seems to me very charming," said Mr. Satterthwaite sedately.

"Yes, poor child."

"Why poor child?"

Lady Cynthia cast him a look of reproach, and went on, approaching the point at issue in her own manner. "Porter's all right--a dull dog, though--another of these African hunters, all sunburn and silence. Second fiddle to Richard Scott and always has been--lifelong friends and all that sort of thing. When I come to think of it, I believe they were together on that trip--"

"Which trip?"

"_The_ trip. The Mrs. Staverton trip. You'll be saying next you've never heard of Mrs. Staverton."

"I _have_ heard of Mrs. Staverton," said Mr. Satterthwaite, almost with unwillingness.

And he and Lady Cynthia exchanged glances.

"It's so exactly like the Unkertons," wailed the latter; "they are absolutely hopeless--socially, I mean. The idea of asking those two together! Of course they'd heard that Mrs. Staverton was a sportswoman and a traveler and all that, and about her book. People like the Unkertons don't even begin to realize what pitfalls there are! I've been running them, myself, for the last year, and what I've gone through nobody knows. One has to be constantly at their elbow. 'Don't do that! You can't do this!' Thank goodness, I'm through with it now. Not that we've quarreled--oh! no, I never quarrel--but somebody else can take on the job. As I've always said, I can put up with vulgarity, but I can't stand meanness!"

After this somewhat cryptic utterance, Lady Cynthia was silent for a moment, ruminating on the Unkertons' meanness as displayed to herself.

"If I'd still been running the show for them," she went on presently, "I should have said quite firmly and plainly, 'You can't ask Mrs. Staverton with the Richard Scotts. She and he were once--'"

She stopped eloquently.

"But were they once?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite.

"My dear man! It's well known. That trip into the interior! I'm surprised the woman had the face to accept the invitation."

"Perhaps she didn't know the others were coming," suggested Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Perhaps she did. That's far more likely."

"You think--"

"She's what I call a dangerous woman--the sort of woman who'd stick at nothing. I wouldn't be in Richard Scott's shoes this week-end."

"And his wife knows nothing, you think?"

"I'm certain of it. But I suppose some kind friend will enlighten her sooner or later. Here's Jimmy Allenson. Such a nice boy. He saved my life in Egypt last winter--I was so bored, you know. Hullo, Jimmy, come here at once."

Captain Allenson obeyed, dropping down on the turf beside her. He was a handsome young fellow of thirty, with white teeth and an infectious smile.

"I'm glad somebody wants me," he observed. "The Scotts are doing the turtledove stunt, two required, not three, Porter's devouring the Field, and I've been in mortal danger of being entertained by my hostess."

He laughed. Lady Cynthia laughed with him. Mr. Satterthwaite, who was in some ways a little old-fashioned, so much so that he seldom made fun of his host and hostess until after he had left their house, remained grave.

"Poor Jimmy," said Lady Cynthia.

"Mine not to reason why, mine but to swiftly fly. I had a narrow escape of being told the family ghost story."

"An Unkerton ghost," cried Lady Cynthia. "How screaming."

"Not an Unkerton ghost," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "A Greenways ghost. They bought it with the house."

"Of course," said Lady Cynthia. "I remember now. But it doesn't clank chains, does it? It's only something to do with a window."

Jimmy Allenson looked up quickly. "A window?"

But for the moment Mr. Satterthwaite did not answer. He was looking over Jimmy's head at three figures approaching from the direction of the house--a slim girl between two men. There was a superficial resemblance between the men, both were tall and dark with bronzed faces and quick eyes, but looked at more closely the resemblance vanished.

Richard Scott, hunter and explorer, was a man of extraordinarily vivid personality. He had a manner that radiated magnetism. John Porter, his friend and fellow hunter, was a man of squarer build with an impassive, rather wooden face, and very thoughtful gray eyes. He was a quiet man, content always to play second fiddle to his friend.

And between these two walked Moira Scott who, until three months ago, had been Moira O'Connell, a slender figure, big wistful brown eyes, and golden-red hair that stood out round her small face like a saint's halo.

_That child mustn't be hurt_, said Mr. Satterthwaite to himself. _It would be abominable that a child like that should be hurt._

Lady Cynthia greeted the newcomers with a wave of the latest thing in parasols. "Sit down, and don't interrupt," she said. "Mr. Satterthwaite is telling us a ghost story."

"I love ghost stories," said Moira Scott. She dropped down on the grass.

"The ghost of Greenways House?" asked Richard Scott.

"Yes, you know about it?"

Scott nodded. "I used to stay here in the old days," he explained. "Before the Elliots had to sell up. The Watching Cavalier, that's it, isn't it?"

"The Watching Cavalier," said his wife softly. "I like that. It sounds interesting. Please go on."

But Mr. Satterthwaite seemed somewhat loath to do so. He assured her that it was not really interesting at all.

"Now you've done it, Satterthwaite," said Richard Scott sardonically. "That hint of reluctance clinches it."

In response to popular clamor, Mr. Satterthwaite was forced to speak.

"It's really very uninteresting," he said apologetically. "I believe the original story centers round a Cavalier ancestor of the Elliot family. His wife had a Roundhead lover. The husband was killed by the lover in an upstairs room, and the guilty pair fled; but, as they fled, they looked back at the house and saw the face of the dead husband at the window, watching them. That is the legend, but the ghost story is only concerned with a pane of glass in the window of that particular room, on which is an irregular stain, almost imperceptible from near at hand, but which from far away certainly gives the effect of a man's face looking out."

"Which window is it?" asked Mrs. Scott, looking up at the house.

"You can't see it from here," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It is round the other side, but was boarded up from the inside some years ago--forty years ago, I think, to be accurate."

"What did they do that for? I thought you said the ghost didn't walk."

"It doesn't," Mr. Satterthwaite assured her. "I suppose--well, I suppose there grew to be a superstitious feeling about it, that's all."

Then, deftly enough, he succeeded in turning the conversation. Jimmy Allenson was perfectly ready to hold forth upon Egyptian sand diviners.

"Frauds, most of them. Ready enough to tell you vague things about the past, but won't commit themselves as to the future."

"I should have thought it was usually the other way about," remarked John Porter.

"It's illegal to tell the future in this country, isn't it?" said Richard Scott. "Moira persuaded a gypsy into telling her fortune, but the woman gave her her shilling back, and said there was nothing doing, or words to that effect."

"Perhaps she saw something so frightful that she didn't like to tell it me," said Moira.

"Don't pile on the agony, Mrs. Scott," said Allenson lightly. "I, for one, refuse to believe that an unlucky fate is hanging over you."

_I wonder_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite. _I wonder._

Then he looked up sharply. Two women were coming from the house, a short stout woman with black hair, inappropriately dressed in jade green, and a tall slim figure in creamy white. The first woman was his hostess, Mrs. Unkerton; the second was a woman he had often heard of, but never met.

"Here's Mrs. Staverton," announced Mrs. Unkerton, in a tone of great satisfaction. "All friends here, I think."

"These people have an uncanny gift for saying just the most awful things they can," murmured Lady Cynthia, but Mr. Satterthwaite was not listening. He was watching Mrs. Staverton.

Very easy--very natural. Her careless "Hullo! Richard, ages since we met. Sorry I couldn't come to the wedding. Is this your wife? You must be tired of meeting all your husband's weather-beaten old friends." Moira's response--suitable, rather shy. The elder woman's swift appraising glance that went on lightly to another old friend.

"Hullo, John!" The same easy tone, but with a subtle difference in it--a warming quality that had been absent before.

And then that sudden smile. It transformed her. Lady Cynthia had been quite right. A dangerous woman! Very fair--deep blue eyes--not the traditional coloring of the siren--a face almost haggard in repose. A woman with a slow dragging voice and a sudden dazzling smile.

Iris Staverton sat down. She became naturally and inevitably the center of the group. So, you felt, it would always be.

Mr. Satterthwaite was recalled from his thoughts by Major Porter's suggesting a stroll. Mr. Satterthwaite, who was not, as a general rule, much given to strolling, acquiesced. The two men sauntered off together across the lawn.

"Very interesting story of yours just now," said the Major.

"I will show you the window," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

He led the way round to the west side of the house. Here there was a small formal garden--the Privy Garden, it was always called, and there was some point in the name, for it was surrounded by high holly hedges, and even the entrance to it ran zigzag between the same high prickly hedges.

Once inside, it was very charming with an old-world charm of formal flower beds, flagged paths, and a low stone seat, exquisitely carved. When they had reached the center of the garden, Mr. Satterthwaite turned and pointed up at the house. The length of Greenways House ran north and south. In this narrow west wall there was only one window, a window on the first floor, almost overgrown by ivy, with grimy panes, and which you could just see was boarded up on the inside.

"There you are," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Craning his neck a little, Porter looked up. "H'm, I can see a kind of discoloration on one of the panes, nothing more."

"We're too near," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "There's a clearing higher up in the woods where you get a really good view."

He led the way out of the Privy Garden and, turning sharply to the left, struck into the woods. A certain enthusiasm of showmanship possessed him, and he hardly noticed that the man at his side was absent and inattentive.

"They had, of course, to make another window, when they boarded up this one," he explained. "The new one faces south, overlooking the lawn where we were sitting just now. I rather fancy the Scotts have the room in question. That is why I didn't want to pursue the subject. Mrs. Scott might have felt nervous if she had realized that she was sleeping in what might be called the haunted room."

"Yes. I see," said Porter.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him sharply, and realized that the other had not heard a word of what he was saying.

"Very interesting," said Porter. He slashed with his stick at some tall foxgloves, and, frowning, he said, "She ought not to have come. She ought never to have come."

People often spoke after this fashion to Mr. Satterthwaite. He seemed to matter so little, to have so negative a personality. He was merely a glorified listener.

"No," said Porter, "she ought never to have come."

Mr. Satterthwaite knew instinctively that it was not of Mrs. Scott he spoke. "You think not?" he asked.

Porter shook his head as though in foreboding. "I was on that trip," he said abruptly. "The three of us went. Scott and I and Iris. She's a wonderful woman--and a damned fine shot." He paused. "What made them ask her?" he finished abruptly.

Mr. Satterthwaite shrugged his shoulders. "Ignorance," he said.

"There's going to be trouble," said the other. "We must stand by--and do what we can."

"But surely Mrs. Staverton--"

"I'm talking of Scott." He paused. "You see--there's Mrs. Scott to consider."

Mr. Satterthwaite had been considering her all along, but he did not think it necessary to say so, since the other man had so clearly forgotten her until this minute.

"How did Scott meet his wife?" he asked.

"Last winter, in Cairo. A quick business. They were engaged in three weeks, and married in six."

"She seems to me very charming."

"She is; no doubt about it. And he adores her--but that will make no difference." And again Major Porter repeated, using the pronoun that meant to him one person only, "Hang it all, she shouldn't have come."

Just then they stepped out upon a high grassy knoll at some little distance from the house. With again something of the pride of the showman, Mr. Satterthwaite stretched out his arm. "Look," he said.

It was fast growing dusk. The window could still be plainly descried, and apparently pressed against one of the panes was a man's face surmounted by a plumed Cavalier's hat.

"Very curious," said Porter. "Really very curious. What will happen when that pane of glass gets smashed some day?"

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled. "That is one of the most interesting parts of the story. That pane of glass has been replaced to my certain knowledge at least eleven times, perhaps oftener. The last time was twelve years ago when the then owner of the house determined to destroy the myth. But it's always the same. _The stain reappears_--not all at once; the discoloration spreads gradually. It takes a month or two as a rule."

For the first time, Porter showed signs of real interest. He gave a sudden quick shiver. "Damned odd, these things. No accounting for them. What's the real reason of having the room boarded up inside?"

"Well, an idea got about that the room was--unlucky. The Eveshams were in it just before the divorce. Then Stanley and his wife were staying here, and had that room when he ran off with his chorus girl."

Porter raised his eyebrows. "I see. Danger, not to life, but to morals."

_And now_, thought Mr. Satterthwaite, _the Scotts have it. I wonder_--

They retraced their steps in silence to the house. Walking almost noiselessly on the soft turf, each absorbed in his own thoughts, they became unwittingly eavesdroppers. They were rounding the corner of the holly hedge when they heard Iris Staverton's voice, raised fierce and clear from the depths of the Privy Garden: "You shall be sorry--sorry--for this!"

Scott's voice answered, low and uncertain, so that the words could not be distinguished; and then the woman's voice rose again, speaking words that they were to remember later. "Jealousy--it drives one to the devil--it _is_ the devil! It can drive one to black murder. Be careful, Richard; for God's sake, be careful."

And then, on that, she had come out of the Privy Garden, ahead of them, and on round the corner of the house without seeing them, walking swiftly, almost running, like a woman hag-ridden and pursued.

Mr. Satterthwaite thought again of Lady Cynthia's words. A dangerous woman. For the first time he had a premonition of tragedy, coming swift and inexorable, not to be gainsaid.

Yet that evening he felt ashamed of his fears. Everything seemed normal and pleasant. Mrs. Staverton, with her easy insouciance, showed no sign of strain. Moira Scott was her charming, unaffected self. The two women appeared to be getting on very well. Richard Scott himself seemed to be in boisterous spirits.

The most worried-looking person was stout Mrs. Unkerton. She confided at length in Mr. Satterthwaite.

"Think it silly or not, as you like, there's something giving me the creeps. And I'll tell you frankly, I've sent for the glazier, unbeknown to Ned."

"The glazier?"

"To put a new pane of glass in that window. It's all very well. Ned's proud of it--says it gives the house a tone. I don't like it. I tell you flat. We'll have a nice, plain, modern pane of glass, with no nasty stories attached to it."

"You forget," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Or perhaps you don't know. The stain comes back."

"That's as it may be," said Mrs. Unkerton. "All I can say is, if it does, it's against nature!"

Mr. Satterthwaite raised his eyebrows, but did not reply.

"And what if it does?" pursued Mrs. Unkerton defiantly. "We're not so bankrupt, Ned and I, that we can't afford a new pane of glass every month--or every week if need be for the matter of that."

Mr. Satterthwaite did not meet the challenge. He had seen too many things crumple and fall before the power of money to believe that even a Cavalier ghost could put up a successful fight. Nevertheless, he was interested by Mrs. Unkerton's manifest uneasiness. Even she was not exempt from the tension in the atmosphere--only she attributed it to an attenuated ghost story, not to the clash of personalities among her guests.