"How many?"
"How many what?"
"Pheasants."
"A brace. They flew right across the south front of the house to a covert on the west side. Is that an important detail?"
"When you hear the evidence you may find it so," commented Furneaux. "Why do you say 'rifle'? Why not plain 'gun'?"
"Because any one who has handled both a rifle and a shotgun can recognize the difference in sound. The explosive force of the one is many times greater than that of the other."
"Are you, too, an expert marksman?"
"I can shoot a bit. Hardly an expert, perhaps, seeing that I haven't used a gun during the past five years. If you know France, Mr. Furneaux, you'll agree that British ideas of sport——"
"I do know France," broke in the detective. "There isn't a cock robin or a jenny wren left in the country.... As a mere formality, what magazine are you working for?"
Trenholme told him, and Furneaux hurried away, halting for an instant in the doorway to raise a warning finger.
"Tomorrow, at the cedars, nine fifteen," he said. "And, mind you, no holocausts, or you're up a gum tree. You were either painting a pretty girl or gloating over her. Prove the one and people won't think the other, which they will be only too ready to do, this being a cynical and suspicious world."
He left a bewildered artist glaring after him. Trenholme's acquaintance with the police, either of England or France, was of the slightest. Sometimes, when overexcited by the discovery of some new and entrancing upland in the domain of art, he had bought or borrowed a volume of light fiction in order to read himself to sleep, and a detective figured occasionally in such pages. Usually, the official was a pig-headed idiot, whose blunders and narrow-mindedness served as admirable whetstones for the preternaturally sharp intelligence of an amateur investigator of crime.
Trenholme, like the average reader, did not know that such self-appointed sleuths are snubbed and despised by Scotland Yard, that they seldom or never base their fantastic theories on facts, or that, in fiction, they act in a way which would entail their own speedy appearance in the dock if practiced in real life. Furneaux came as a positive revelation. A small, wiry individual who looked like a comedian and spouted the truisms of the studio, a wizened little whippersnapper who put hardly one direct question to a prospective witness, but whose caustic comments had placed a new and vastly disagreeable aspect on the morning's adventure—such a man to be the representative of staid and heavy-footed Scotland Yard! Well, wonders would never cease. It was not for a bewildered artist yet to know that Furneaux's genius alone excused his eccentricities.
And he, Trenholme, was to meet the girl! He turned to the easel and looked at the picture. A few hours ago he had reviled the fate that seemed to forbid their meeting. Now he was to be brought to her, though somewhat after the fashion of a felon with gyves on his wrists, since Furneaux's request for the morrow's rendezvous rang ominously like a command. Indeed, indeed, it was a mad world!
At any rate, he did not, as he had intended, tear the canvas from its stretcher and apply a match to it in the grate. Thus far, then, had Furneaux's queer method been justified. He had hit on the one certain means of restraint on an act of vandalism. The picture now stood between Trenholme and the scoffing multitude. It was his buckler against the shafts of innuendo. Rather than lose it before his actions were vindicated he would suffer the depletion to the last penny of a not altogether meager bank account.
Of course, this open-souled youngster never dreamed that the detective had read his style and attributes in one lightning-swift glance of intuition. Before ever Trenholme was aware of a stranger standing in the open doorway of the dining-room Furneaux had taken his measure.
"English, a gentleman, art-trained in Paris. Thinks the loss of La Giaconde a far more serious event than a revolution, and regards the Futurist school pretty much as the Home Secretary regards the militant suffragists. Knows as much about the murder as I do about the rings of Saturn. But he ought to provide a touch of humor in an affair that promises little else than heavy tragedy. And it will do Miss Sylvia Manning some good if she is made to see that there are others than Fenleys in the world. So, have at him!"
While going downstairs, the detective became aware of some sniffing in the back passage. Eliza red-eyed now from distress, stood there, dabbing her cheeks with a corner of her apron.
"Pup-pup-please, sir," she began, but quailed under a sudden and penetrating look from those beady eyes.
"Well, what is it?" inquired Furneaux.
A violent nudge from curl papers stirred the cook's wits.
"I do hope you dud-dud-didn't pay any heed to anythink I was a-sayin' of," she stammered. "Mr. Trenholme wouldn't hurt a fuf-fuf-fly. I sus-sus-saw the picter, an' was on'y a-teasin' of 'im, like a sus-sus-silly woman."
"Exactly. Yet he heaps coals of fire on your head by declaring that you are the best cook in Hertfordshire! Is that true?"
Furneaux's impish grin was a tonic in itself. Eliza dropped the apron and squared her elbows.
"I don't know about bein' the best in Hertfordshire," she cried, "but I can hold me own no matter where the other one comes from, provided we start fair."
"Take warning, then, that if I bring a man here tomorrow evening—a big man, with a round head and bulging blue eyes—a man who looks as though he can use a carving-knife with discretion—you prepare a dinner worthy of the reputation of the White Horse! In that way, and in none other, can you rehabilitate your character."
Furneaux was gone before Eliza recovered her breath. Then she turned on the kitchen maid.
"Wot was it he said about my char-ac-ter?" she demanded warmly. "An' wot are you grinnin' at? If it wasn't for your peepin' an' pryin' I'd never ha' set eyes on that blessed picter. You go an' put on a black dress, an' do yer hair respectable, an' mind yer don't spend half an hour perkin' an' preenin' in front of a lookin'-glass."
Mary fled, and Eliza bustled into the kitchen.
"A big man, with a round head an' bulgin' blue eyes!" she muttered wrathfully. "Does he think I'm afraid of that sort of brewer's drayman, or of a little man with eyes like a ferret, either? If he does, he's very much mistaken. I don't believe he's a real 'tec. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he wasn't a reporter. They've cheek enough for ten, as a rule. Talkin' about my char-ac-ter, an' before that hussy of a girl, too! Wait till I see him tomorrow, that's all."
Meanwhile, Furneaux had not held the second glass of Château Yquem to the light in Tomlinson's sanctum before Winter's car was halting outside Brondesbury police station. An Inspector assured the Superintendent that a constable was on the track of Robert Fenley, and had instructions to report direct to Scotland Yard. Then Winter reëntered the car, and was driven to Headquarters.
He was lunching in his own room, frugally but well, on bread and cheese and beer, when the Assistant Commissioner came in.
"Ah, Mr. Winter," he said. "I was told you had returned. That telephone call came from a call office in Shaftesbury Avenue. A lady, name unknown, but the youth in charge knows her well by sight, and thinks she lives in a set of flats near by. I thought the information sufficient for your purpose, so suspended inquiries till I heard from you."
"Just what I wanted, sir," said Winter. "There may be nothing in it, but I was curious to know why Hilton Fenley took the trouble to fib about such a trivial matter. His brother, too, is behaving in a way that invites criticism. I don't imagine that either of the sons shot his father—most certainly, Hilton Fenley could not have done it, and Robert, I think, was in London at the time——"
"Dear me!" broke in the other, a man of quiet, self-contained manner, on whose lips that mild exclamation betokened the maximum of surprise. "Is there any reason whatsoever for believing that one of these young men may be a parricide?"
"So many reasons, sir, and so convincing in some respects, that the local police would be seriously considering the arrest of Robert Fenley if they had