14 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Louis Tracy

      CHAPTER VIII

      An Interrupted Symposium

       Table of Contents

      "Have a cigarette," said Grant to Furneaux, when the blinds were drawn, a lamp lighted, and the sherry dispensed.

      "Thank you."

      The self-invited guest took one. He sniffed it, broke the paper wrapping, and crumbled some of the tobacco between finger and thumb.

      "Ah, those Greeks!" he said sadly. "They simply can't go straight. This brand of Turk used to be made of a tobacco grown on a slope above Salonica. A strip of sun-baked soil built up a reputation which is now being bartered for filthy lucre by the use of Egyptian 'fillings.'"

      "You're a connoisseur, Mr. Hawknose—try these," said Hart, proffering a case, from which the detective drew a cigarette, throwing the other one aside.

      "Why 'Hawknose'?" he inquired.

      "A blend. First syllable of Hawkshaw and second of Furneaux—the latter Anglicized, of course."

      "And vulgarized."

      "You prefer Furshaw, perhaps?"

      "Either effort is feeble for a man who can write about South America, and be lucid. Do you smoke this stuff, may I ask?" While talking, he had smelt and destroyed the second cigarette.

      "If it's a fair question, what the devil do you smoke?" cried Hart.

      "Nothing. I'm a non-smoker. My profession demands a clear intellect, not a brain atrophied by nicotine."

      "Piffle! Carlyle and Bismarck were smokers."

      "Who reads Carlyle now-a-days? And what modern German pays heed to Bismarck's dogmas? Look at that pipe of yours. It was once a pure ivory white. Now it is black—soiled by tobacco juice. Your lungs are slowly emulating it, and your wits will cloud in time. Read Tolstoi, Mr. Hart. He will teach you how nicotine deadens the conscience."

      "At last I know why I smoke like a Thames tug," laughed Hart, "but I'm blest if I can understand why you make such a study of the vile weed."

      "Most criminals are addicted to the habit. I classify them by their brand of tobacco. For instance, a clever forger would never descend to thick twist, while a swell mobsman would turn with horror from a woodbine."

      Minnie entered, and nodded, whereupon Grant led the others upstairs to wash. From the bathroom he looked out over a darkening landscape. Doris's dormer window was open. She was leaning on the sill, but he could not tell whether or not her eyes were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little man's characteristics which induced wariness.

      The dinner was a marvel, considering the short notice given to the cook. Luckily, Mrs. Bates, a loyal soul, had resolved to tempt her employer's appetite that evening. Village gossip had it that the police were about to arrest him, and she was determined he should enjoy at least one good meal before being haled to prison. Hence, the materials were present. The rest was a matter of quantities, and Sussex seldom stints itself in that respect.

      The chatter round the table was light and amusing. The three were well matched conversationally. Furneaux evidently held the opinion once expressed by a notable Walrus—that the time had come

      To talk of many things:

       Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—

       Of cabbages—and kings.

      He was in excellent form, and the others played up to him. Hart's slow drawl was ever trenchant and witty, and Grant forgot his woes in congenial company. As for the mercurial detective himself, it might be said of him as of the school-master of Auburn:

      And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,

       That one small head could carry all he knew.

      It was he who dropped them with a bounce from the realm of fancy to the unpleasing region of ugly fact. No sooner had Minnie cleared the table, and brought in the coffee, than he whisked around on Grant as though hitherto he had been only awaiting an opportunity of scarifying him.

      "Now," he said, propping an elbow on the table, and supporting his chin on a clenched fist, "the embargo is off the Steynholme affair. You didn't kill Adelaide Melhuish, Mr. Grant. Who did?"

      "I wish I could tell you," was the emphatic answer.

      "Do you suspect anybody? You needn't fear the libel law in confiding your secret thought to me, and I assume that Mr. Hart is trustworthy—where his friends are concerned?"

      "Why that unkind differentiating clause, my pocket Vidocq?" put in Hart.

      "Because two Kings and a baker's dozen of Presidents have, at various times, sent most unflattering reports to this country about you."

      "I must have annoyed 'em most damnably."

      "You had. I congratulate you, but Heaven only knows where I may convoy you some day on an extradition warrant....Proceed, Mr. Grant."

      "I assure you, on my honor, that the only reasonable suggestion I can make is that put forward by my gardener to-day," said Grant. "He thinks that the murder must have been committed by a lunatic. I can offer no other hypothesis."

      "Your gardener may be right. But what lunatic, barring yourself and the horse-coper, Elkin, is in love with Doris Martin?"

      Like Elkin the previous night, Grant struck the table till things rattled.

      "Keep her name out of it," he cried fiercely. "You are a man of the world, not a suspicious idiot of the Robinson type. You heard to-day the full and true explanation of her presence here on Monday night. It was a sheer accident. Why harp on Doris Martin rather than any member of the Bates family?"

      "Who, may I ask, is Doris Martin?" put in Hart.

      "The Steynholme postmaster's daughter," said Furneaux. "A remarkably pretty and intelligent girl. If her father was a peer she would be the belle of a London season. As it is, her good looks seem to have put a maggot in more than one nut in this village."

      Hart waved the negro's head in the air.

      "The lunatic theory for mine," he declared. "If one woman's lovely face could bring a thousand ships to Ilion, why should not another's drive men to madness in Steynholme?"

      "Well phrased, sir," cackled Furneaux delightedly. "I'll wangle that in on a respected colleague of mine, who is a whale at deducing a proposition from given premises, but cannot induce a general fact from particular instances to