book I

told you that the Case affected a number of people in various and curious ways and byways, and I was now beginning to think that the descent of that parachute on Esdaile's roof had left not one single member of our group unaffected. I must remind you again that at that time I actually knew far less than I have already told you; but except by collation, rearrangement and boiling down I could not have set down these facts at all. I had, for example, seen Esdaile's shocked expression on discovering that the stranger who had come down on his roof was none other than his friend Chummy Smith, but up to that time I had not set eyes on that unruffled young criminal himself. I had guessed what this discovery must presently mean to Joan, but was unaware of that headstrong dash of Mollie's up to London, and her lagging return to Santon. I had heard Hubbard's fantastic speculations as to the nature of the mysterious apparatus Esdaile kept in his cellar, but did not know that both Rooke and Mrs. Cunningham had actually been down in the cellar. I had enjoyed the spectacle of a rising barrister unconsciously frustrating the aims of a coroner's jury, but had had to pump Hanson for even the meagerest scraps of information about the subject of that inquest. And twice or thrice I had unblushingly lied to a Chesterfield of the Saloon Bars, but without a suspicion when I had done so that this very person, seeing another prime actor in our Case descending a ladder, had had the curiosity to know what made his pocket so lumpy and the deftness of hand to ascertain.

So I had begun to look with a good deal of apprehension at our Case. The beastly thing was like an egg, that hatched out one creeping thing after another. And, as I paused at the end of a long concrete-floored passage and knocked at Rooke's door, I wondered if Rooke would give me news of still another.

VI

He did. His face did so before ever he spoke. In a moment I knew that something had happened about that wedding--certainly that it had been put off, possibly worse. Still without speaking he showed me in.

He was lunching, or rather making a combination meal of lunch and breakfast in one. A single glance round the room told me a good deal about the state of mind of its occupant. I have been hard-up myself, and know these symptoms of negligence of body, mind and surroundings. He was fully dressed, but he wore yesterday's collar and his boots had not been cleaned. His bed was unmade, his furniture undusted, his floor unswept. He seemed to have got up late, to have wondered what after all there was to get up for, and not to care much whether he stayed up or went back to bed. It was all extraordinary unlike his former orderliness and neatness and precision, and I made up my mind that there were several things I intended to say to him before I left him.

"Well, how are you?" he asked perfunctorily. "Have some cocoa. I'll wash another cup."

"No, thanks. You carry on with your breakfast. I've just been round to see Esdaile. Is he away?"

"Went off on Tuesday," Rooke replied.

"Where, to Yorkshire?"

"Yes. Took that fellow with him--you know--the flying fellow."

"But why aren't you at the studio?"

He answered evasively. "Oh--I chucked that idea."

"But listen to me. You were to have got married, weren't you?"

"Oh--Audrey chucked that," he replied, pushing his cup away.

"Chucked it altogether, do you mean?"

"Looks like it," he grunted. "Let's talk about something else."

But, looking round the untidy room again I wondered whether it would not be better for him to talk about precisely that. Even an active smart was preferable to sloth and helplessness of that kind, and there is something very lovable about Monty at his best.

"No, no," I said. "Much better get it off your chest. And look here, my friend, you haven't shaved this morning. That sort of thing doesn't help. Talk about something else? No, let's talk about this. Where is Mrs. Cunningham?"

"I think Buxton this week. Haven't looked at the _Era_. She's on tour if you must know."

"But why? Why are things--like this? Surely there's a reason?"

"Oh, she said she just couldn't stick it," he answered with an off-handed but tremulous little laugh.

"Stick what?"

"Everything."

I knew what he meant by "everything." He meant, simply, this confounded Case. Now, it appeared, it had power to break off an engagement and to bring Rooke down to dirty table-cloths, unmade beds and marmalade out of the grocer's pot.

"Look here, Monty," I began, touching his sleeve, "we've been friends for quite a number of years now----"

"Oh, don't," he interrupted me petulantly. "Leave a fellow alone."

"No, I'm not going to leave you alone like this. I want you to tell me why you left the studio, and why Mrs. Cunningham's gone off on tour, and a number of other things."

Well, it took time, but bit by bit he yielded. In sullen, resentful sentences he began to talk.

"What do I mean by everything?" he said. "Well, I mean everything. Nothing's gone right. Nothing at all. Everybody's fed up to the back teeth, Esdaile too. And all that stupid business last week just about put the tin hat on it."

"Do you mean that photograph in the papers?"

"Yes, and those idiotic crowds, and all their senseless talk. Who wants a streetful of fools gaping at his windows for two or three days on end like that? Then they started pulling his leg at the Club. So he just waited till this chap Smith was fit to be moved and then cleared out. I don't blame him."

"Yes, I can understand Esdaile's being annoyed; but that's over now, and I don't quite see why you should leave and come back here."

"Well, Audrey wasn't going there anyway," he answered. "She'd had enough of it. Got it into her head there was something uncanny about the place, and so there is. Too much mystery altogether. That was Esdaile. He keeps you on the jump the whole time."

"What do you mean by keeping you on the jump?"

"All sorts of ways. There's that cellar of his for one thing; he was never in the same mind about that for half an hour together. We were going to take a cupboard or something down there one day; it was his own suggestion; but he twisted and wriggled and tried to cry off till I was about at the end of my patience. You'd have thought he wouldn't have us down there at any price. And then suddenly he turned round and said we could go down if we liked. Idiotic I call it."

"Did you go down?"

"Yes. And there was nothing whatever to make all that fuss about as far as I could see. I admit I'd wondered once or twice whether there was anything queer, but I went into every corner and there was absolutely nothing to see."

"You're thinking of that other morning when he was down there all that time?"

"Yes. I can't make head or tail of that yet, but I can't see it's anything to do with the cellar. And just listen to this. After making all that fuss he came up again and didn't even bother to take the key out of the door. It was there when I came away. One day he nearly jumps down your throat when you ask him for the key, and the next thing he goes and leaves it in the door! I'm sure he did it on purpose too. It was just like saying, 'Go and live down there if you like.' Well, I wasn't going to be messed about like that. I'm not going nosing round other fellows' places. I'm not a policeman. So I cleared out. Would _you_ have stopped after that?"

Again his voice shook a little, and I could guess at the meaning behind his words. He meant, Would I have continued in a house the offer of which had promised so much happiness that one moment's happening had turned to discord and misunderstanding? I cannot say that I should.

VII

In my anxiety to set him talking after his own fashion I had not yet asked him anything about what had passed between Esdaile and Smith; but I intended to do so. For, just as Monty himself had been the first obstacle to Philip's letting us into the heart of his mystery straight away, so Smith, you will remember, had since blocked the current of disclosure. Philip had had to see Smith before taking the next step, and, as I had pre-figured the matter, he would go to the hospital one day as soon as Smith had sufficiently recovered, would ask for his account of the affair, and would then take the rest of us into his confidence or not, as the case might be. In other words, it depended on Smith's explanation whether Philip and the rest of us continued our efforts at suppression or--did the other thing.

But now Esdaile seemed to have taken neither course. As far as I could gather he had calmly evaded the whole situation by carrying Smith off into the country out of our sight and hearing. I admit that, since the assassin was taken into the bosom of Esdaile's own family, it looked as if he had succeeded in making out some sort of a case for himself; but I also remembered the strong bias of friendship and the practically instantaneous resolution both he and Hubbard had taken that their Chummy was to be stood by till the last possible moment. That is not the most judicial frame of mind imaginable. Loftier, if chillier heights are conceivable. Esdaile alone of us had asserted from the beginning, and had stuck unwaveringly to it, that as a matter of plain unvarnished fact Smith had shot Maxwell. All along his manner had proclaimed that the accident theory, which was good enough for the women and the police, was vamped up and a lie. Was he now going to have the face to say to us, "Well, I've seen him, and he admits everything, but he had his reasons--unfortunately they meant putting a bullet into a fellow, but to hang Chummy won't bring t'other chap back to life--better let the whole thing drop"?

How beautifully simple!

But at the same time how very unfortunate that an outsider, laboring under a sense of grievance, should have patted Monty's pocket as he came down the ladder that morning!

Monty had risen, a little shamefacedly I thought. But for my call I fancy he would have left his breakfast things as they were, washing up the next cup when he wanted it. Now he began to stack them together for a general washing-up. He went into the little lobby place that held his taps and I heard the running of water into a basin; then he turned to his tumbled bed and began to re-make it. He muttered something about my not minding his carrying-on. I was far from minding it.

"But look here," I said as he moved about, "about Smith. You say Philip's seen him. What did he say about it?"

"Who, Philip or Smith?"

"Well, both of them. Didn't Philip tell you?"

"He didn't say much. He wasn't gone much more than half an hour--couldn't have had more than ten minutes with him--and then he came back and said he was taking him away the next day but one."

"Then that was while you were still at the studio?"

"Yes. It was then I told him I'd had enough of it and was coming back here. He told me not to be an ass, but I don't call that being an ass. I don't mean there was a row, but I'd got my back up a bit, and I didn't feel like asking him questions. I was sorry for him too in a way. You see, that morning after his wife came up----"

"What!" I exclaimed in surprise. "Has his wife been up since she left that morning?" (This, as I have told you, was the first I had heard of it.)

"Yes. She turned up late one night. I was out--I'd gone for a walk Roehampton way just to think things over--that was before Audrey'd told me she----" He stopped, as if distrusting his voice.

"Yes?" I gently urged him.

"About his wife coming up. I didn't see her till next morning. I expect she was tired out with the journey; anyway, her face was as gray as that Michelet paper there. And Philip was done in too. That's why I didn't want to make any bother. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. I don't know what's happened to us all."

I could have told him. It was the Case that had happened.

"Mrs. Esdaile too--she was just the same----"

Naturally. The Case was the same.

"I hadn't very much talk with her. Of course, I asked her how Joan was----"

Yes, Joan was in the Case too.

"And she told me she'd seen Dawdy the night before. Dawdy was all a bundle of nerves, and Mrs. Esdaile put her to bed. She told me that if she were me she'd go round there at once and tell her--tell her----"

But here he broke down suddenly and completely. He sank on the edge of his bed and buried his face in his hands. He shook with sobs.

"Oh," he broke out uncontrollably, "it's all that beast--that beast Cunningham----"

"Oh no," I thought; "it wasn't Cunningham; it was the Case."

"You don't know the life that brute led her," he went on. "Drunken blackguard--women all over the place--and Dawdy, Dawdy at home! I hope he's in hell! Killed her heart he did. Can you blame her for not wanting to chance it again? I hardly had the heart to beg her, I was so broken up. She admitted she'd nothing against me. She just wanted to be right away from all men. So I pay for that beast. Somebody always has to pay, I expect. If only I'd seen her before he did----"

Presently he was better. He got up and began to move about again. "Sorry," he said shortly. "But what would you do?"

"Well, I should shave for one thing," I said quietly. "And for another, I don't think I'd make up my mind that everything was entirely hopeless. You never know what'll happen. It may be all right presently."

"I suppose you're right," he admitted. "No good chucking your hand in like this. Sorry. But it is a bit upsetting, you know."

Could I at that moment have added to his troubles by telling him about Westbury, the ladder and the pistol in his pocket?

Perhaps I could have done. Anyway, I didn't.

VIII

I recognized the more readily the separate and inhuman vitality this Case of ours was beginning to assume when I carefully considered its

## action upon myself. My connection with it was slight by comparison with

that of some of the others, but I was aware of its operation. The attitudes into which it began to constrain me were not quite natural attitudes. It exercised pressure. What pressure?

Well, to begin with, this pressure--that I began to find it difficult to leave it alone. Both at home and at the office of the _Daily Circus_ it intruded between me and the work I ought to have been getting on with. Little fleeting pictures began to interpose themselves. Sometimes I would find myself looking fixedly at a galley-slip or a page still damp from the proving-press and seeing, not the thing in my hand, but Joan Merrow running in with the children from the garden again; at home my page of manuscript would blur and there in a doorway Philip Esdaile would stand, his eyes dancing with a stilly excitement, the curaçao and the candle once more in his hands. And this, in my curious trade, is a serious matter. Out of precisely these insubstantialities I have to contrive to pay my rent and income-tax and to provide my bread-and-butter. I will not go so far as to say that I dreamed of the Case at night, but it began to play the dickens with my work. Unable to settle down to it, I found the Park drawing me instead, and even in the afternoons, which in ordinary commercial honesty were not my time at all, I began to put in the briefest and most perfunctory appearances at the office. I contented myself with the appearance of busyness, and wondered how long it would be before my chief caught me out.

In this frame of mind I happened one afternoon, by the merest chance, to run across Cecil Hubbard. I had dropped into a Technical and Scientific Exhibition of some sort, and I had thought I had seen Hubbard's white-topped cap and foursquare back in the downstairs rooms, but had lost them again. It was upstairs, a quarter of an hour later, that I found him.

He was watching another man, evidently an attendant or official of the Exhibition, who wore a double telephone-receiver about his ears and was slowly turning the handle of an instrument that at a first glance resembled an overgrown typewriter. Hubbard was peering into the mechanism. Then, at the invitation of the other man, he removed his cap and clasped the receiver about his head. The official continued to turn the handle.

"Hallo!" I said, coming up. "May one ask what it is?"

Hubbard turned. "Hallo, what are you doing here?" was his greeting. Then to the attendant, "What do you say the thing's called?"

It was the optophone, and perhaps you may have seen, or rather heard it. It is an instrument for enabling a totally blind man to read a page of ordinary print. I myself had never heard of the thing, and am not sure that I give a technically correct description of it now, but, as I understand it, the page travels along the carriage in such a way that each letter in turn passes over a tiny ray of light that is directed through a morsel of selenium. The letter causes an interruption; a lower-case "l," for example, which is a straight line, making one kind of break, but an "i," which is the "l" with the dot cut off the top, a different one; and so with the other letters. The transmutation is of light into sound, and the official assured us that with a very little practice the ear learns to distinguish the minute variations in the telephonic receiver without difficulty.

Remembering Hubbard's former (to me lunatic) conjectures that day when I had called on him at the Admiralty, I thought it an odd chance that I should come upon him examining such a thing as this optophone seemed to be; but our talk did not begin with that. Leaving the instrument, we turned away between glass showcases of fabrics and British glass and brilliant dyes and crystals and approached a window-bay that looked out on a gray courtyard.

"Well, what are you doing here?" he said again cheerfully. "It's a long time since you looked me up."

I told him that I went to all sorts of places in search of a little clowning for the _Circus_, and added that it was precisely the same distance from his place to mine as from mine to his. He laughed.

"I should have thought this was out of your line," he replied. "Well, what's the news?"

It was not likely that Hubbard had forgotten incidents so remarkable as those of that Lennox Street breakfast-party. Moreover, I could see he was sorry he had met me at this dead hour of the afternoon; he always talked better over lunch at Simpson's, with a Bronx or a Martini to start off with. Failing these, there was nothing for it but a cup of tea to wash down our chat, and as a matter of fact it was at a Slater's place in the Strand, with a rather good little band of violin, 'cello and piano that, a quarter of an hour later, we settled down.

"Well, Esdaile's taken your friend Chummy away," I observed when our teapots had been brought.

"Oh, he has, has he?" said Hubbard. "Queer business that, wasn't it? Have you made anything of it all yet?"

"I can't say I have; but then I'm rather at a disadvantage in not knowing your friend. Tell me something about him."

"Well--what, for example?"

"As I know nothing you can't go far wrong," I replied.

Music is one of the Commander's passions, and, as I say, that Slater band was not too bad. I think it was the "_Valse Triste_" that sent him off into a reverie. The young creature who played the fiddle had bobbed hair and was rather an attractive sort of sylph, and the Commander's blue eyes with the dark dots in them were fixed on her intricately-moving fingers.

Then he came out of his musing with a sudden jerk. What I especially like about Hubbard is that he usually knows what you want to know, and does not cease to feel the working of your mind even through a longish silence.

"Extraordinary thing," were his words as he came out of that silence. "It seems to be like the wind--blows whither it listeth. You look for it where you'd expect it and it isn't there, and then up it pops in a place you'd never think of looking for it."

This sounded to me rather like some of my own Publicity conclusions; but "What does?" I prompted him.

"Oh, the fluence--the gism--the real stuff--the thing you know when you see it but haven't got a name for," he replied off-handedly. "I suppose you writer-fellows call it genius.... How old's Smith? Twenty-four I should say, so it isn't a matter of accumulated experience. He couldn't be more dead right if he was a hundred-and-four."

"Right about what?"

"Well, about his job. Aviation. What it's for, just as much as ever now the War's over."

"Tell me--but remember I'm a journalist."

"All the better," he replied promptly. "The more you rub it in the better. The War only ended a few months ago, but a good many people seem to be trying to think there's never been one. That's right enough from the economic point of view, of course--gets people back to work again--but there is the other side, and I wish you would rub it in."

"Well, what do you want rubbed in?"

The eyes that had caught mine in Esdaile's studio rested on my face again now. Then he pulled out a fat cigarette.

"Civil aviation's for War, of course--the next War," he said almost contemptuously. "You're not one of those who think it's for express-letters, are you? Or carrying a cheap-jack Bradford agent to make a dicker in wool? That's where so many of you newspaper fellows make the mistake. You're all so clever at disguising the truth. You don't take people into your confidence enough."

Professionally this began to interest me. The public, its interests and its confidence are supposed to be my business.

"Go on," I said.

"Well, you don't," Hubbard repeated. He has rather a rapid and abrupt manner of speech that enables him better than anybody I know to carry off the things men are usually a little shy about. "The Bradford man has his affairs, I know, and it may sometimes be an advantage to get a letter there a couple of hours quicker, but that's not the point. There are two points, as a matter of fact. One's the training of your men, and the other's continuity of manufacture. If this country forgets either of 'em it may as well chuck its hand in. Why," he exclaimed in a phrase that arrested me in a quite remarkable way as chiming in so exactly with my own private observations, "look at the Elizabethans! What did _they_ do? They wanted ships and they wanted sailors. So they developed the North Sea fishing industry. Gave 'em all sorts of bonuses and rebates and privileges. Not for the sake of a few dead fish. Not on your life. It was to keep the men in training and the shipyards running and the Spaniard out. And it's the same with civil aviation to-day."

I won't say that I had never thought of this before. But one thinks of all sorts of things that evaporate in the thinking, so that for practical purposes they might just as well never have been thought. It was his energy and certitude and single-mindedness that gave it all its force. And although I am a journalist, that is why I think that all our print is dead and cold until it is vivified by the heard and passionate voice. Oh, I know the stock argument--that for one that is reached by the human voice a thousand are influenced by the printed word. Well, so they are, until a contradictory word is printed and both messages jam to a standstill. But you can't jam the pentecostal flames that give the prophets utterance. I am inclined to think that if there is one indestructible thing in the world it is the Uttered Word. Naturally I refrain from dwelling too much on this in the office of the _Daily Circus_. But it lies behind every word of our print for all that.

"Another thing," Hubbard continued. "I don't know much about the Elizabethans, but I'm prepared to bet that a good many of 'em were youngsters. While old Burleigh was nodding, some infant just out of his cradle was getting away with it. At all events, there's no reason that I can see why he shouldn't as well be twenty as ninety--every practical reason why he should, in fact."

"Do you mean young Smith's like that?" I suddenly asked.

Perhaps it wasn't quite fair. When a man has the pluck to talk on these lines it is rather a cold douche to bring it all down to one finite and fallible human being. Even the pentecostal flame may flicker at times. But I noticed that Hubbard did not say No. Indeed, he did not answer me at all. His eyes were on the child with the fiddle again and the living, climbing fingers.

"Clever hands, aren't they?" he said. "Wish I could play the fiddle."

IX

It was a little later, when we came to speak of the optophone, that I found him to be still firmly rooted in the conviction that Esdaile's cellar contained the solution of at least a portion of our mystery. He was quite unshakable on this point. I will not trouble to re-state his recapitulation of the events of the morning of the farewell breakfast. Of subsequent events, I may say, he knew little.

"Well, I won't pretend to understand you," I said at last. "If you seriously think that Esdaile's got some sort of an optophone in his house----"

He waved his hand impatiently, as if to beg of me not to be an ass.

"Oh, cut that out. I'm not given to melodrama any more than you are. Of course he hasn't; that's infantile. But what is there to prevent there being something peculiar about the ordinary acoustics of the place--perfectly ordinarily and naturally, but one of these freakish effects--there are such things--an echo's the commonest example, of course--then there _are_ these whispering effects--vagaries of sound----" He tailed off.

"But he heard no sound," I objected, "or at any rate so little that we decided he couldn't know what it was. He certainly didn't hear what we heard. You've got the whole thing turned round."

"I know," he mused. "And yet he gave you the impression of a man who knew more than all the rest of us put together. In fact, he practically admitted he did."

"But--if you will have it it's the cellar--two people have been down since."

He turned quickly. "Who are they?"

"Rooke and Mrs. Cunningham."

"Well, and what had they to say about it?"

I had to admit that, according to Rooke, something about the place had brought Mrs. Cunningham to the verge of hysteria, while Rooke himself had found the place inexplicably uncanny.

"Then as far as it goes that bears me out?"

"As far as it goes. But they found nothing out of the ordinary. Esdaile even left the key in the door, and there was nothing to prevent them from rummaging to their hearts' content."

"Did they rummage?"

"Rooke didn't. Said he wasn't a policeman to go scratching about other people's houses. I thought it rather decent of him."

"Well--it's possible they didn't know what to look for."

"Do you?" I parried.

"No," he confessed,--"not unless he keeps a tame ghost down there."

"In that case the Chelsea Arts Club would be right," I laughed; and we went on to speak of other things.

X

Then one morning I had a letter from Joan Merrow, which I give you without the alteration of a single word. If you yourself have a modern young Anthea who may command you anything and does not hesitate to do so I accept your sympathy in advance. The letter ran:--

"DEAR OLD THING,

"Do be an angel and do one or two little things for me. I'd rather ask you than anybody else because you're the _kindest_ person I know. If you're too busy of course you'll say so straight out, but what I want first of all is for you to get me the addresses of a few nice small houses or convenient flats."

In course of time I had recovered my breath. This, remember, was in 1919. It was not the Crown Jewels her ladyship wanted, merely "a nice small house"; not the sun, moon and stars, only "a convenient flat." I think my nerves might be spared shocks of this kind at my time of life.

"Of course, I know rents have gone up," she continued, "but Chummy thinks there ought to be plenty of quite nice little places for about £70, but you could go up to £75 for a really nice house with a garden, rates and taxes included, of course. There are some sweet little houses right on the edge of the Heath at Hampstead with trees all round them and dear little brass knockers on the doors, but I don't know if any of those are empty, but you might ask."

I seemed to remember those sweet little houses. If I am right, your father puts his name down for one of them on his coming of age, and, with luck in the matter of intervening deaths, your son may end his days there. I have never had the impiety to ask the rent of them.

"There wouldn't have to be any premium, and there _must_ be a telephone. Speaking of telephones, I do wish you could persuade Philip to have that one of his moved, as where it is everybody can hear every word you say. The house needn't be Hampstead, of course, Wimbledon or Richmond would do if you wouldn't mind having a look round. If you went on the top of a bus you'd be out in the fresh air and the blow would do you good. Then there would be the question of a maid, but we shouldn't want her for a month or two yet."

At this point a little fanning with the letter refreshed me considerably.

"And now," the joyous thing continued, "if you happen to be anywhere near Regent Street it would be so kind if you would call at Morny's and get me some soap, I like Chaminade best, and some tooth-powder, any good sort. I know how busy you are, but it is so difficult to get things here. I tried to get some Petrole Hahn the other day, but they'd never heard of it. I'd ask Mrs. Cunningham, but I hear she's away, and you carry colors so well in your head. That's why I wonder if you'd call at that little bead-shop in Oxford Street, nearly opposite Frascati's, and see if they have any amber beads, not the real amber, of course, iron-amber I think they call it. Chummy wants me to have some because of my hair. Not the huge ones, please, but from about the size of a pea to as big as a marble."

"Or a 7.65 mm. bullet," I murmured to myself.

"The weather here is lovely and we're out all day long, and I do wish you were here. But my bathing-costume is a perfect rag. I hate the skirted ones and always wear a plain club one, either navy blue or black; but I'm afraid it won't run to a silk one, though you might ask the price. And now here's something that isn't for me at all. You know Hamley's, either in Regent Street or Holborn, but they have a better selection in Regent Street. The boys want two pairs of water-wings, and they'd better be of different colors or they'll get them mixed up and be always quarreling. And oh, Chummy says it's awful neck, seeing he doesn't know you, but there are some pipes, 'Captanide' they're called, and you get them at Loewe's in the Haymarket. There are two sizes, and he would like the smaller size, two of them, please. You can add them to my bill as they're my present to him and he's giving me the beads, and he'd better have some tobacco for the pipes. His number at Dunhills' is 06369. A pipe is better for him than cigarettes, though I allow him six cigarettes a day and you can only get gaspers here. Any nice kind would do as long as they're Turkish. Thanks so much. How is the novel getting on? We're both so looking forward to reading it. Is it a love story? I do hope it is, as I'm sure you'd do that so beautifully. Do be a pet about the house. I'm sending you some flowers to-morrow.

"JOAN."

With a light sigh I folded the letter and put it into my pocket. At any rate, there seemed to be two people on whom our Case did not weigh too heavily.

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