A 515853


LIBR
BRARY
ERAL
GENET
AN *
ARTES
1817
.S
NIVERS
S
RSITY
WENTIE
QAVES
YOEN
MICHIG


Ell
J 95 i





THE
TALL
HOUSE
MYSTERY


BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE WESTWOOD MYSTERY
THE WEDDING CHEST
MYSTERY
DEATH OF JOHN TAIT
THE UPFOLD FARM
MYSTERY


THE TALL
HOUSE MYSTERY
By A. FIELDING
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
New York
Chicago
Published by arrangement with H. C. Kinsey & Co., Inc.
Printed in U. S. A.





Deer o JLi. i
ONE
There is no pleasanter place in London after dinner
than the large central hall of the Carlton Club, with its
comfortable armchairs and its little coffee tables, that
suggest both privacy and gregariousness.
For here a man may speak to a fellow-member with-
out being introduced—perhaps because it has so large
a number of young men among its members. Just now,
the tables were almost empty. It was only a little past
eight. Haliburton had dined early in that large dining-
room where the portraits of Conservative statesmen
look down tolerantly on morning-coats or full tails.
Haliburton had had a friend, a saturnine, silent man
called Tark, dining with him; and now Moy, a young
solicitor, had dropped in for a few words.
Haliburton was talking at the moment.
"I think I'm a fatalist," he was saying. "Yes, on the
whole, I think I am." He was a pleasant-faced young
man, tall, thin, with a certain assured yet unhurried
way with him which, some said, was due to the fact that
he had never yet had to bestir himself for anything. He
was the son of Haliburton, the banker, and grandson
1


2 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
of Haliburton, the ship-owner, and through his mother
alone had as an income what many would consider a
handsome capital. He was Unionist member for some
small country constituency until something, better
should be free.
Moy was about the same age, around twenty-five;
small of stature, quick and eager in eye and movement.
Tark, the third man, struck such a different note that
at first glance one would have taken him for a foreigner.
Moy liked Haliburton, but he did not care for his com-
panion, whom he had met in his company a couple of
times lately. But, though he did not like Tark, Moy
was interested in the man. For the young solicitor was
writing a play in secret, and was keenly interested in
finding characters for it. Haliburton, he had decided,
was no earthly good to a writer. Rich. Easy going.
Kindly . . . but this other, the chap with the name
that suited him somehow-—because it rhymed with shark
probably, Moy decided—he might be very useful. He
turned to him now.
"You a fatalist too?" he asked. "But you can't be,
or you wouldn't have fished Haliburton out of that weir
as you did."
Everyone in their little world knew that Tark's punt
and Haliburton's canoe had collided on the Thames,
and that, but for Tark's swimming powers, the House
of Haliburton would have had no heir, for Haliburton
could not swim. Somehow you wouldn't expect him to,
Moy reflected. Haliburton would naturally count on a
motor boat turning up, or a submarine nipping along,
or a seaplane swooping to his assistance.
"No." Tark's voice suggested that he had said all .


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 3
there was to say on the point. He was the most silent
man that Moy had yet met.
"A fatalist doesn't necessarily mean a man of inac-
tion," Haliburton explained carefully.
"He evidently struggled in the water!" Moy said
with a laugh. Haliburton laughed too. Tark only gave
a twist of his thin tight lips.
What a pity that his play was not on the Inquisition,
Moy thought. Tark would do so splendidly for one of
the inquisitors; a man without feelings, but with plenty
of intelligence. Or had Tark intelligence? He looked at
the low forehead, the high set ears, the something about
the whole face that suggested stone, or wood, and was
not sure. But his suitability for the role of inquisitor
seemed to fit better the longer he studied him. Yet Tark
had never shown him any eagerness, any intensity of
emotion, and an inquisitor must be capable of both.
It must be something hidden deep down in the man.
Unless his ideas of him were all wrong, Moy reflected.
"Well." Moy roused himself from his discreet but
intent contemplation of Tark. "Now for the reason
for my coming in formal state this evening. I have a
proposal I want to lay before you, Haliburton."
"And I thought you a friend," murmured Haliburton
lazily.
"You know that we-—my father's firm—often have
houses to let for our clients? Well, among these is a
house in Chelsea called The Tall House."
"Sir Miles Huntington's?" Haliburton labeled it
correctly.
"Yes. He's off to the Arctic for a year. The year's
nearly up, but as he wanted such a high rental, the


4 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
place has been on our hands all the time. A week ago,
we got a note from him, which had evidently been
months on the way, authorizing me to let it for what-
ever I could get for it. But by now, there's only a bare
six weeks or so left. It's a beautiful old house. Angelica
Kaufmann lived in it. Reynolds painted one of the
ceilings, or may have done so"
He saw Haliburton sit up with sudden interest, his
large clear eyes fastened on Moy. Moy knew why and
nodded to himself with an inward grin. The fish was
rising.
"Of course, it's hardly ever that a house of that kind
is to be had furnished for a bit over a month, five weeks
to be exact. As a rule, I could do nothing with so short
a time, but I happened to speak of it to Frederick
Ingram yesterday morning." More interest in Hali-
burton's steady gaze. Even Tark of the impassive fea-
tures seemed to be listening very intently. "Yes, I
mentioned it to Fred Ingram yesterday. His brother
Charles and he"
"Half-brother," corrected Haliburton in a tone as
though the detail mattered.
"—half-brother, then," Moy corrected, "are also
clients of ours. We handle their father's estate."
"If you're going to take Frederick Ingram as a
lessee!" Haliburton spoke with a contempt at variance
with his usual placidity.
"Hardly!" Moy's tone matched the other's. "No, he
doesn't come in to this except as the originator of the
proposal, which is this: Miss Pratt, it seems, wants
tremendously to stay in town in a really old house
with genuine period furnishings, and, though the Tall


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 5
House is shabby enough inside and out, it contains
some magnificent old stuff. Entailed, of course, or it
wouldn't be there. Well, bearing this in mind about
Miss Pratt, Freddie wondered if his brother wouldn't
like to take the house on for the few remaining weeks."
Haliburton's face flushed.
"But Ingram turned it down when I dropped in last
evening," Moy went on, and Haliburton's flush died
away.
"He thought it would be beyond him. It's not merely
the rent, it's the servants, and all that sort of thing.
Well, that seemed that, but this morning Frederick had
another brain wave. The new idea is to form a sort of
syndicate among ourselves, five of us, and each take
the house and run it for a week. Mrs. Pratt and her
daughter being the guests of each host in turn. Charles
Ingram is quite keen on this amended form. He will
be one of the five; a friend of his, Gilmour, who shares
a flat with him at Harrow, will make two; I come in as
third—my humble tenement is in the hands of the
plumbers at the moment, and I assure you I shall be
thankful not to dance to any more of their piping for
a while. Ingram at once suggested my asking you to be
the fourth host, and any friend whom you liked to
nominate could be the fifth. That would make you and
him all square, he seems to think."
"That's very decent of Ingram," Haliburton said
warmly. "Of course, I accept with pleasure. And Tark,
here, will come as the fifth man, I know. He's keen on
getting to know Ingram better, since reading one of his
books."
Tark's affirmative came at once. He moved for a


6 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
moment so that the light fell full on him, and Moy
thought again how unprepossessing his face was, with
its narrow lips slightly askew, its narrow-bridged nose
just off the true, and its narrow dark eyes that never
seemed to dance or sparkle. But his lips were parted
now as though he were breathing fast. Moy was sur-
prised. That Haliburton should be interested, he could
understand, or rather he had firmly expected, for he
and Charles Ingram were suitors for the hand of
Winnie Pratt, but that Tark should be stirred . . .
he had had an almost wolfish look for a second. . . .
Fortunately Haliburton was vouching for him, other-
wise Moy would never have let him come in. But at any
rate, he, Moy, could now tell Ingram that the syndicate
was complete. Just like chivalrous Ingram to have
practically insisted that his rival should have an equal
chance with himself. Probably by the end of the five
weeks Miss Pratt would have made up her mind which
of the two men she preferred. Haliburton had been
prime favorite till a month ago, when Ingram had first
met her, and had seemed to score with his talk of books
and plays. Ingram was a highbrow, a writer of scientific
books himself. Mathematics was his especial line, but
he was a man of broad literary interests. Mrs. Pratt
openly favored Haliburton, but then Haliburton's rent
roll explained that, and in time he would succeed his
shipping grandfather in the peerage. Moy was looking
forward to the five weeks. He certainly ought to get
good material for his play out of it. Take Winnie Pratt
for instance ... a lovely young thing, complexion all
cream and roses. But with no character that one could
get hold of, how could one catch her wonderful charm?


THE TALL' HOUSE MYSTERY 7
Tark was speaking again. Moy felt as though the
man's vocal chords must creak with the unaccustomed •
work.
"Ingram's book on Ciphers Past and Present is posi-
tively monumental." He spoke with slow heavy
emphasis.
Moy did not know whether Tark's praise referred to
quantity or quality, but he nodded a cheerful assent.
"I take the first week, beginning next Friday," he
told them. "So as to get things rolling smoothly."
"Friday!" broke in Tark, "why not Thursday or
Saturday?"
Moy thought he was joking, but the wooden features
did not show any indication of it being a jest. On the
contrary, Tark repeated his question.
"It fitted in better," Moy said rather vaguely.
"He's superstitious as a cat," Haliburton said.
Moy burst out laughing. "You mean nervous"
and he laughed again, for any one less nervous—if
looks could be relied on—than Tark, he had yet to see.
"Well, he's superstitious as a Solomon Islander,
then," Haliburton amended. "That's because he's not
a fatalist. But go on, Moy, you're going to take the
first week"
"I suggested that Ingram should take the second,
but he thought you and he should toss for it."
"Certainly not! Of course Ingram must take the
second week," Haliburton said definitely. "Any week
after his will suit me. And I'll take one day less or
more, Tark, so as to throw your week, when it comes,
on to the most auspicious moment."


8 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Moy reflected how easy it was to work with pleasant
chaps like Ingram and Haliburton.
"All right, then, you take the third week "he
was jotting notes down as he spoke, "shall we put
Gilmour in for the fourth, and Tark here for the fifth?"
But Haliburton suggested that as Tark seemed so
fussy over days—his smile rid the words of all offense
—perhaps it would be better for Gilmour to take the
third week, which would bring his, Haliburton's, week
and Tark's together at the end, when days could be
added or omitted as preferred. It was settled like that,
and Moy stayed a few minutes more to explain how he
had arranged about servants—which was why it would
have been very awkward to alter the date of taking
over the house. Another client of his firm's had given
her servants a holiday on board wages and had been
groaning at the expense. He had wired her a suggestion
that he could get them a five weeks' engagement en bloc,
to which she had agreed with alacrity.
The servants, too, partly unable to help themselves,
and partly taken with the idea of handsome tips, had
agreed to start work this coming Friday if so requested
by Moy. Everything promised to go without a hitch.
He would be treasurer. Any man could invite any
friends he wanted during his week, but Moy hoped that
only the bedrooms on one of the floors would be used,
as he wanted no trouble with the maids. The house had
a couple of full-size lawn tennis courts behind it, and
day-time friends of any, or all, of the five would be
welcome. As for evening entertainments, he, Moy, would
give an opening dance, and a dance would close the last
of the five weeks, otherwise, again remembering the


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 9
servants, the hosts would do their entertaining outside
the house.
Moy left, after the two had signed a simple prelim-
inary agreement. Haliburton turned to Tark when the
young solicitor had hurried out to his little car.
"I had no idea until you told me, that you were
interested in Ingram's line of work." Haliburton looked
at hjis companion with friendly curiosity as they saun-
tered back to their table in the lounge.
"Numbers, the science of numbers, has always fas-
cinated me." Tark was unresponsive as always, yet
now there was something in the dark depths of his eyes
like slumbering fire. "More so even than ciphers, and
they're fascinating enough."
There were those who hinted that Tark was getting
full payment out of Haliburton for having dived in and
held up the other's unconscious body, but if so, his
manners were certainly not those of a climber. He gave
the impression of disliking everyone at first sight. Even
Haliburton at times wished that someone else had saved
his life.
Moy drove on to Harrow, where Ingram and Gilmour
shared the ground floor of a pleasant rambling house.
It was emphatically the flat of two young men who
were workers. Ingram, as has been said, wrote on more
or less mathematical subjects. Gilmour was a Civil
Service First Division clerk. Both young men lived well
within their means. At the moment, Moy found Fred-
erick Ingram with his half-brother in the latter's book-
lined writing-room. Frederick had dropped in to ask
about some doubtful figures in an equation, he ex-
plained. Moy knew that he had gone in for that sort of


10 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
thing during his short and inglorious career at Oxford,
and also knew that the elder Ingram was giving him
some proof-reading to do for him. But proof-reading
would hardly explain the look on Frederick's face as he
brushed past the solicitor, his beetling black brows
knitted, his small, but thick-lipped, mouth set. And even
in the room, usually so devoid of all stir, there was
something that suggested a clash of personalities still
in the air. Ingram himself had a firm will. He looked as
much. His was a handsome face with its scholar's brow
and deep-set passionate eyes with their direct gaze.
A humorous mouth, a rather forbiddingly high-bridged
nose, and a resolute jaw.
He now pushed some books away, and stretched him-
self as though he too had felt the tension, and was glad
to relax.
"Gilmour out?" Moy asked after shaking hands and
accepting a glass of light Australian wine. He learned
that Gilmour was in his own den. So into the lounge
Moy and his host now went. A door opened.
"Frederick gone?" Gilmour asked in a defensive
voice, apparently prepared to shut the door intsantly
on a negative reply.
"Yes, some of my figures puzzled him," Ingram said
slowly, and with a sigh of vexation, or weariness that
could hardly be connected with figures.
His telephone rang, and he stepped back into his
room.
"Figures of some sort are always the explanations of
a tall from Frederick," Gilmour said under his breath,
as Ingram closed his door. Moy grinned. None knew
better than he how involved the financial affairs of the


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 11
younger Ingram were, and he strongly suspected that
Ingram had given him some work to do merely as an
excuse for helping him out with money, though he
claimed to have found Frederick unexpectedly careful
and good at the job.
Ingram now came back, and the three discussed the
taking over of The Tall House. Ingram was vastly en-
tertained at the idea. He had an engagement, however,
and had to hurry off, leaving Gilmour and Moy to finish
working out the details on paper.
"I hope he'll get his money's worth," Moy said as
they finished. "A rather vulgar way of putting it. But
I hope Ingram won't be let down."
"You mean Miss Pratt?" Gilmour slanted his head
on one side and looked doubtful. He was a smallish
man, very good at games. He was not, and did not look,
clever, but he did look companionable and cheery, which
was all that was necessary in a stable companion of
Ingram's, Moy reflected. The mathematician had brains
enough for any two.
Moy now grunted that he did mean Miss Pratt.
"If she's any judge of character, she'll take Ingram
and be thankful," Gilmour said warmly.
"Haliburton's a nice chap too," Moy reminded him
a trifle impishly. He found himself looking forward to
the coming five weeks at The Tall House from its sheer
human interest. A lovely girl, two honest men in love
with her . . . what more could any future dramatist
hope to find laid out before him? Whom would she
choose? Ingram had fame and sufficient means to live
in quiet comfort. Haliburton could offer splendor and
a title later on. Which would Winnie Pratt take?


TWO
"Why do you dislike me so?" Winnie Pratt smiled up
at the young man beside her. Most young men would
have been overcome with joy, for Miss Pratt made a
lovely picture as she stood on the lawn of The Tall
House in a white muslin frock with a soft green sash
and a large hat. Her flower-like little face just now
wore a bewildered, hurt expression that her delicately
aligned eyebrows emphasized.
Gilmour laughed awkwardly. "Have I been rude,
Miss Pratt? If so, it's only because Pm not accustomed
to such visions of loveliness. I'm grown into a dull old
hack." Now Lawrence Gilmour did look rather dull,
but he was distinctly not old, and he was quite un-
usually good-looking in a fresh-faced, ruddy, rather
countrified way.
"Is he a dull old hack?" she asked Moy, who was
passing them at the moment.
"Do you want a standing opinion?" he asked with
affected seriousness.
"If it's not too expensive," Miss Pratt returned,
smiling at him.
12


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 13
"Nothing is too expensive for you!" he retorted with
mock devotion. "Then merely as an opinion for the
purpose of the discussion, and subject to the"
"Help! Let me escape!" Gilmour edged away with
mock fright, but with genuine eagerness, and walked
back into the house.
"There!" Winnie waved a hand after him, "tell me,
Mr. Moy, why he avoids me so. It—it's—most"
She seemed at a loss for a word.
"Unusual," Moy finished, laughing. She laughed too.
But there was vexation in her lovely eyes. "It's so
noticeable," she persisted petulantly.
Moy refused to take her seriously. "The absence of
one worshiper among the multitude? Surely not!" But
he went after Gilmour.
He found him in the square hall of the house drinking
lemon squash.
"Look here," Moy began at once, "why make your-
self conspicuous, old man?"
"In what way?" Gilmour's tone was wary.
"By insisting so markedly on having nothing to do
with Miss Pratt," Moy finished. "What's wrong with
meeting a lovely young thing half way? Most men would
give half their fortune to be in your shoes."
"I'll do a deal with them, instantly!" Gilmour
grinned back. "I loathe the girl, Moy, and that's the
truth."
Moy stared at him. Yet he looked in earnest. But of
course this was just a joke.
"Because of her cadaverous and withered appear-
ance, I suppose," Moy asked. Even Gilmour laughed at
that question.


14 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
"I know it sounds mad," Gilmour was speaking a
little under his breath, slowly and very gravely. "She's
infernally pretty. And yet "He hesitated. "Oh,
well, put it down to my not wanting to make a fool of
myself—just now. Oh, damn, there she comes again!"
And catching sight of a nicker of white muslin, he once
more fled, this time into a farther room.
Moy's lips twitched as he watched him. From where
he stood, he could see that the white muslin belonged
to Mrs. Pratt, not to the daughter. He himself went
back into the garden again, but he did not make for
Miss Pratt. Winnie was not for any solicitor. He won-
dered with a moment's amusement how Mrs. Pratt
would take it if he entered the lists too. For Mrs. Pratt
considered that Haliburton was the only possible choice
for her beautiful daughter. Unfortunately Winnie, like
many another spoiled beauty, seemed on her arrival at
The Tall House to have suddenly set her heart on what
apparently she was not to have, and that was Gilmour.
He was evidently anchored elsewhere, Moy reflected.
No man whose heart was free could withstand those
smiles. Gilmour had been about to say as much just
now. What did perplex Moy was the extraordinary
fact of Gilmour's dislike of the girl, his almost open
hostility to her. It was all really more amusing to
watch and speculate over than he had expected. And
few things in life are that. He was, of course, prepared
to see the Haliburton-Ingram silent, well-mannered duel
continue, but he had never hoped to see Miss Pratt
fairly throw herself at the head of a third man, who
would try his best to throw the enchantress back again.
He wondered how Haliburton and Ingram liked :t.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 15
Fortunately they were such pleasant fellows, both of
them, and Miss Pratt's attack was simply an acute
form of wanting what she was not going to get, which
would cure itself in time. Luckily it was Gilmour and
not Frederick Ingram whom she had suddenly decided
to capture. Frederick Ingram professed himself one of
her victims, but Winnie refused even to look at him;
which was as well, for Frederick was an utter waster.
It was said that even Ingram had been so stirred by
the cheek of Frederick daring to lift his eyes to the
Beauty, that he had told him not to come near The
Tall House while she was there. Moy watched Ingram
for a moment, reflecting on the oddity that the scholar
should be so captivated by a featherhead. Moy was still
of an age to put a value on cleverness in women which
he would not do in later years. Yes, he vowed to himself,
Miss Pratt would be difficult to put in a play . . .
apart from her beauty, there seemed so little to get
hold of . . . Then how, in a play, to make it clear
why two sensible young men were ready to count a day
well lost if it brought them but one smile from her?
Haliburton came out of the house again, and stood
a moment watching Ingram play. As a rule he was well
worth attention. Turning his head, Haliburton saw
that Tark was also watching the game.
"Had your talk with him yet?" he asked pleasantly.
Tark started as though he had not noticed that anyone
stood beside him.
"Not yet."
"I heard you talking to someone in the house just


16
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
now. It sounded like Frederick Ingram. He isn't here,
surely?”
Tark did not reply.
“I didn't know you knew him,” Haliburton went on.
“I met him abroad,” came the casual reply. Moy
thought again how his voice suggested lack of use. Yet
the man did not look an anchorite. Or did he? Moy,
for one, had a feeling as though Tark lived in a cell-
windowless, doorless, dark and utterly lonely.
“Probably through no fault of your own,” Hali-
burton said excusingly.
Tark gave the half-smile, half-sneer that was his
nearest to showing merriment.
“I didn't realize that he was a brother of the mathe-
matician Ingram. By the way, isn't he coming to stay
here at the house too?”
“Certainly not,” was the instant rejoinder. “I believe
Ingram has taken him on in a sort of semi-demi-secre-
tarial position, but neither he nor Gilmour are fond
of Frederick. Like most people.” And with that Hali-
burton seemed to lose himself in the game again.
“What's the matter with Ingram's play!” he ejacu-
lated after another moment.
“Miss Pratt,” came the reply. Haliburton's eyes, fol-
lowing the other's, now saw Gilmour walking stolidly
along, his eyes on the grass, like a worried owner think-
ing of re-turfing, and beside him, her face turned up to
his downbent one, which did not even glance at her,
pattered the little white shoes of Miss Pratt.
Haliburton frowned and watched Ingram serve
another fault.
“Women always want what they can't get,” Hali-


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 17
burton said at length, and for once his good nature
sounded a trifle forced. "Miss Pratt has all the rest of
us at her feet, and just because Gilmour holds out, she
means to have his scalp."
Moy came closer. He overheard the words. "She's
a dreadful flirt," he threw in lightly. Moy wanted to
hear what Haliburton would reply. Motives and cross
currents, just now, were to Moy what rats are to a
terrier. He could not pass them by.
"I wouldn't call her a flirt," Haliburton said un-
easily.
Moy laughed at him.
"You wouldn't call her anything but perfection."
Haliburton reddened. He had a trick of that.
"Oh, I don't know," he spoke awkwardly, "I don't
mind owning that I wish she would stop trying to sweep
Gilmour off his feet. There's no harm in her trying, of
course, but "He stopped, not quite sure how he
intended to finish the sentence.
"She'll soon tire of her effort," Moy now said sooth-
ingly, and in silence the three watched Ingram miss a
ball that he could have caught with his eyes shut had
he been his usual nimble-footed self. He won in the end,
it was true, but the games he had lost he had given
away. He now made for Miss Pratt, and Gilmour at
once stepped back, waving them towards the house for
drinks. Miss Pratt would have lingered, but Gilmour
fairly swept them on their path and stood smiling a
little as they went.
Mrs. Pratt touched his arm. She, too, was smiling,
but her eyes were not gay.
"A word with you, Mr. Gilmour. Suppose we have


18 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
a look at the malmaisons?" They turned a corner of
the artificially intricate little garden. It cut them off
from the courts. As they stood before the flowers she
went on:
"Mr. Gilmour, I think I must speak plainly to you."
"By all means." His sunburned face smiled encour-
agingly down into her worn one. Mrs. Pratt had been
as lovely as Winnie in her day, but no one would have
guessed it now.
"I want you to stop throwing my daughter at Mr.
Ingram's head." She lifted her chin as she spoke and
looked him straight in the eyes. For the first time, Gil-
mour really noticed her. He saw energy and will power
in that face—qualities that he always admired. He saw
more—the determination that makes things come to
pass—another of his own likings.
"I don't agree with your way of putting it," he said
now, quietly, "but if you mean, that because Ingram is
my friend, I want him to have the girl he loves, you're
right. I do. He'll make her a splendid husband. Any
mother could hand her daughter to Charles Ingram
with confidence. I've known him for years, and I assure
you that he"
She made an impatient snap with the fingers that
hung down at her side.
"Winnie is going to marry Mr. Haliburton. That
was why I got out of all our other engagements to come
here for this month. But your friend, Mr. Ingram, is
quite another matter. I do not think she would be
happy with him."
He looked his dissent.
"Please, Mr. Gilmour," the mother said to that,


20 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
jubilantly. "I felt sure there was something like that.
I do congratulate you, Mr. Gilmour. What's her
name?"
"Alfreda Longstaff. But it's not settled—unfortu-
nately. It's only a hope," he put in hastily.
"Do have her up here," she begged. "I'll chaperone
her with pleasure. But now to come back to my first,
my only grievance," she smiled at him now with genuine
kindliness, "please don't try to wreck your friend's life
—for if he were really to fall in love with my daughter,
it would be such a pity!"
"It's too late to say that," Gilmour replied gravely.
"He is deeply in love with her."
"He'll have to get over it," she said bruskly.
"I still don't see why he should have to." Gilmour's
face was that of a man who would not easily give up his
chosen path. "I don't in the least see why he should."
There was no mistaking the change in Mrs. Pratt's
look. For a second she stood pressing her lips together,
then she said slowly:
"Does Mr. Haliburton strike you as a man of un-
limited patience? He doesn't me."
"He's very good-natured . . ." he began vaguely.
Gilmour hardly knew Haliburton.
"He has that reputation," Mrs. Pratt threw in, "but
—well—I doubt his standing much nonsense. He's not
been accustomed to it. Besides, why should he? And
if he let Winnie go "Her face seemed to grow
pinched at the mere words. "No, listen!" she said im-
periously, "I'll be quite frank. I'm living on my capital.
I was a wealthy girl myself, and married a man who
was believed to be well off. So he was—so we both were


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 21
for a time. But we were both extravagant, and when
he died I found that even his insurance had been mort-
gaged. I was left to struggle along with Winnie as best
I could, for we neither of us had any relations. Bit by
bit my capital has been eaten into, until—well, I can't
keep the flag flying much longer. Now Basil Haliburton
at the moment would settle half the world on Winnie.
And she loves him. In reality." The last two words
came defiantly. "Anything else is just play. I want the
affair settled when we leave here. And so it will be if
you head off your friend."
"But he's quite well to do," Gilmour urged.
"Not as Mr. Haliburton is!" was the unanswerable
reply. "Let alone as well off as Basil will be when his
grandfather dies."
"I know he has big expectations," Gilmour agreed,
"but I assure you that Ingram's means"
"Are not the kind that I want for Winnie," snapped
Mrs. Pratt.
"But perhaps the kind that she wants for herself,"
came the reply with a smile that Mrs. Pratt called
"positively fiendish" in its impudence.
"It's no good, Mrs. Pratt. I'm backing my friend
to win."
There was a moment's silence.
"Do you suppose I've endured what I have to be
thwarted now—when the struggle is nearly over?" Her
tone startled him by its intensity. He saw that he had
gone too far.
"Look here, Mrs. Pratt," he spoke in a more con-
ciliatory tone, "give Ingram a trial. You talk as though
he were a pauper. He's anything but."


22 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Again came that snap of her fingers at her side, anc
suddenly Gilmour guessed—rightly—that Mrs. Pratt
had borrowed money on the strength of her daughter's
coming engagement to Haliburton. But she only gave
him a rather fierce look and moved away. Gilmoui
looked after her ruefully. He very much disliked un-
pleasantness.
"Mrs. Pratt seemed peeved with me,—just like you,"
he said under his breath to Moy.
"I don't wonder. You're a sort of involuntary dog-
in-the-manger. And she looks a good hater."
"Well, if my corpse is found some fine day lying in
the tool shed, you'll know where to look," and Gilmour
broke off to watch with open pleasure Ingram capture
Miss Pratt and lead her off to the house under the plea
of some books having come from Hatchett's and want-
ing her help to choose a couple for his sister's children.
Ingram led the way into the library which had been
handed over to him for his exclusive use all the more
absolutely in that no one else wanted it. He was the
only member of the five who had to continue his work
at The Tall House itself, and it evidently was work that
admitted of no putting off. During the day and earlj
evening he might—and did—dance attendance on
Winnie Pratt, but from ten onwards every night he shut
himself into the library and let nothing disturb him.
Sometimes it was long past midnight when he went up
to his rooms. No one at the house got up early. Mot
talked as though he let the milkman in on his way to
his office in Lincoln's Inn, but a quarter to ten was the.
earliest that ever saw him running down the steps to hi|
little car. At half-past nine Gilmour would have started


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 23
for the tube. Half-past ten saw Haliburton off the
premises. Moy sometimes thought that it was because
Ingram could be with Winnie so many hours of the day,
that he left suppers and the evenings to Haliburton.
Certainly as far as the two men were concerned, the
balance seemed only too even. Whichever one was with
her appeared to be the favored man.
In the library she carefully selected the books whose
bindings pleased her the best, and then stayed on listen-
ing to Ingram's eager words about the popular book he
was planning on the arithmetical aspect of the universe.
He was a charming talker and, as she listened, as she
watched his rapt eyes, something of the fascination
which he could exert over her came back again. No one
but Ingram ever talked to Winnie as though she had a
brain. He appealed to it, and Winnie's intelligence
struggled forward to meet the appeal. Perhaps, too,
something was due to Gilmour's flat refusal to be led
on her string. At any rate, for the time being, Ingram
regained something of his old ascendency over her.
There had been a week or two when he had entirely
eclipsed Haliburton.
That young man now strolled in and joined in the
chat. He seemed genuinely interested in Ingram's talk
and gave a little sigh when Winnie drifted out again in
answer to Mrs. Pratt's urgent reminder that she and
her daughter were due at a friend's cocktail party.
When she was gone Haliburton would have lingered,
but Ingram made it clear that he wanted to write a few
pages before the post left. As a rule he let no one inside
his writing-room. By sheer personality he had estab-
lished a sort of frozen line at the door across which no


24
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
one stepped uninvited. The door had stood open just
now and the room had been free to anyone who cared
to step in, but, with the going of Winnie, Ingram
changed, as he was wont to change, at his desk. For one
thing he seemed to grow years older, for another he
tolerated no time-wasters.
Moy was certain that Ingram often locked himself in.
He had an idea that the scientist was working against
time, or at least working on something where time
counted. And apparently that something was to be kept
a dead secret until publication. Ciphers, probably, he
thought. Once he had heard a sound he knew well
enough, the clang of the lid of a deed box and the turn-
ing of a key. That was just before Ingram had hurried
out to join the others. Evidently Ingram kept his ideas
well safeguarded.


THREE
Alfreda Longstaff was not happy, and did not look
it. But there were possibilities in her pale, dark face.
She looked the kind to break records, had she the
chance, behind a wheel, or in a 'plane. If so, Fate had
not given her much of a hand to play, so far. Alfreda
was the only child of the rector of Bispham, and was
expected to keep house for her father and mother. She
rebelled, naturally, but as no money was forthcoming
for any training that would enable her to earn her
own living, she had rebelled in vain—though by no
means in silence, or in secret. But this last spring she
had hoped for a release. Chance had brought down to
Bispham a young man whose good looks attracted her
immensely. She thought that he cared, too ... he
had come to the rectory in the first place because he
heard that the rector played a good game of chess—as
he did—but after that Alfreda had flattered herself
that Lawrence Gilmour came because of her. He was
the only marriageable man of good position and of her
own age who had come into her life so far. Alfreda
went all out for his capture. He liked games—well,
25


26 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
she had a one figure handicap and a magnificent serv-l
ice, and gradually the links and the lawn tennis court;
seemed to oust the chess board. She had shown he,
hand quite openly, sure of her prize. But he had gont
away with only the usual civil partings. Flowers and s
box of chocolates had come—once. That was over a
month ago—a month of the village's open and con-
cealed amusement or pity.
She was thinking of Gilmour today, when the secre
tary of the golf club asked her to play a round with a
London man whose partner had failed to turn up, a;
had Alfreda's. Men met on the links meant little, she
had found, and this one wore a wedding ring. He had i
clever face, she thought, and decided, with one of her
inward sighs, that he had not lived all his life in Bis,
pham, or he would never look like that. The rector ,
wife had just been rebuking her daughter that morning
because the sugar basins had not been properly filled.
Alfreda was expected to see to this. What a life, or
rather what a death! thought Alfreda.
She never played better, and Warner, the man fron
town, was two down at the ninth hole.
"You ought to give me a stroke a hole," he said witi
a smile, "but then, I'm"
"Oh, don't say you're feeling ill!" she interruptec
almost fiercely.
"Feeling ill?" he repeated wonderingly.
"Whenever I beat a man, he's 'got a touch of liver,''
came the retort, "or he's 'coming down with the 'flu.
Or he's 'most fearfully knocked with the heat,' or hi
'wrist is wonky,' or 'one of his knees is giving hin


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 27
trouble again.' It's the aim of my life to live long
enough to beat a really well man.'*
Warner burst out laughing. "So a grouch against
the world was steeling those wrists," he said placat-
ingly. "Let's have a rest and a talk. You've got me
sunk already." He held out his cigarette case.
"But haven't you come down for a game?" She hesi-
tated, taking one.
He shook his head. "For quiet."
"Good Heavens!" She sat so as to face him, her lip
curling. "Fancy coming for quiet! Fancy wanting the
stuff! Well, you've chosen the right tomb."
"So that's the trouble," he murmured in a kindly
tone, "ah, yes, you're straining at your bonds. We
all do—did. I'm not sure"
"Don't tell me that you aren't sure we're not happier
when toddling round in pinafores, or lisping our prayers
at mother's knee than when sitting on the Woolsack,
or hobbling into the House of Lords," she interrupted
again, even more hotly than before.
Warner eyed her. He felt a bit sorry for mother.
This young lady looked as though she might have an
awful temper. There was frustration in her face—and
bitterness. She was quite handsome in a hard, clear-
cut way. He was not attracted to her. But she had ar-
resting eyes.
"I'm on a newspaper," he said simply, "and naturally
the idea of quiet appeals."
"On a newspaper!" She drew a long breath, and
almost choked herself with her cigarette. "Heavenly
job!"


28 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
"Hardly." His eyes twinkled. "Interesting, if you
like. But hardly heavenly."
"What are you? An editor?" She regarded him with
envy.
He nodded. "Something of that sort." He was a news-
paper proprietor.
"How does one get newspaper work?" she asked
breathlessly.
"By writing clever articles," he said vaguely. Sud-
denly he saw an abyss opening at his feet. "That is to
say—for real genius, that's the way," he corrected
hastily.
"Oh, genius!" she said heavily. "But—had you
genius?" She spoke with an air of sincerity that took
the rudeness out of the question.
His shake of the head answered.
"I suppose you had a tremendous lot of determina-
tion," she went on, looking thoughtfully at his shovel
of a chin. "There's nothing like a will of one's own for
getting on, they say."
In Warner's case it had been a will of his uncle's that
had deposited him in one of the high places of the news-
paper in question. But he nodded. She, too, had a force-
ful jaw, he thought.
"Tenacity of purpose is necessary, yes," he agreed.
Then he changed the subject of his own arrival on the
mountain top by saying, "But, besides genius, you
know, the thing to do is to be on the look-out for a
scoop. By that "Her ironic gaze told him that even
in Bispham that word was familiar.
"I'm afraid there's not much chance of a scoop down
here," she said. "My father's sermons, and my mother's


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 29
chats at meetings, hardly lend themselves to that sort
of thing. As for crimes—well, it's true a policeman
got drunk once, and we still shudder at the tale, but
that was years ago, when my father was a boy. The
only dramatic happening I remember was when a
woman lost her purse on the station platform, and I
lent her half a crown—all my worldly possessions. As
it was in this part of the world, she returned the money
next day."
He laughed too. Then he tilted his cap further over
his eyes and said meditatively, "And yet, that's what
first gave me my taste for newspaper work, and set me
on my feet—a scoop. A body was found floating in the
river. Well, it might have been suicide. I worked it up
into a three weeks front page thriller." He spoke with
pride.
"Was it suicide?" she asked.
"I believe it was." His tone implied that what it
really was did not figure in the balance sheet, except
as enhancing the credit of the decorations, "but it isn't
the facts. It's the way they're handled—treated."
"I see." She sat silent a moment. "But if nothing
happens, what does one do to get out of the rut? I
should love newspaper work," she finished, in a tone of
fervor that was positively alarming—to an editor.
Warner decided to go all out on the scoop theory of
advancement. He did not want a young female besieg-
ing him with postal packets of manuscript which would
probably have no return stamps. He decided to be more
wary.
"A scoop is really the only way," he repeated dog-


30 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
matically. "Something mysterious happens, or some-
thing that can be made to look so."
"Here in Bispham?" Her tone was raillery itself,
but she waved to him to proceed.
"If you're the first in the field you can offer your
stuff to almost any newspaper and, later, you can pos-
sibly work into a post on it. Now what about finishing
the round?"
She played so badly that he knew her mind was wan-
dering. It is a curious fact, he reflected, that your
mind may be on something else, and you can do your
work quite decently, but let your mind wander ever
so slightly at a game, and the game is ruined. Which
looks as if games were harder than work ... a little
third article might be made out of the idea, treated
humorously . . .
He thanked her when they were back at the club-
house again, and suggested cocktails. She declined. Her
father expected her to be home to pour out tea, but she
spoke as though half dreaming. He watched her long
stride making for the gate with some misgiving.
"I hope she won't murder the verger so as to qualify
for a post with me," he thought. "She looks capable of
a good deal."
At the rectory, Alfreda came to a sudden halt in the
shabby old hall. Surely she knew that hat, that voice,
and stepping through on to the veranda there rose up
before her the man whom she had never expected to see
again—Lawrence Gilmour. The sun glinted on his
brown hair and seemed to shine in his brown eyes. Sud-
denly a wave of hatred passed over Alfreda such as she
had never dreamed that she could feel. He to stand there


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 31
smiling, after leaving her to the tender mercies of the
village gossips! For the first time she dared to realize
how much she had suffered. In pride, in dismay, in
hopes lost, in the pity and the scarcely veiled amuse-
ment of the countryside, and which of those two last
had been the harder to bear she could not tell. It all
welled up inside her now. Usually pale, there was a
flush like a soft rose in her thin cheeks, her lips were
a vivid bow of color unhelped by any cosmetics. Alfreda
did not use cosmetics. They were expensive, and what
was the use—at Bispham? Her eyes were sparkling as
she looked into his.
"Alfreda!" he said, coming forward and taking her
hand. "I find that I can't get on without you. Have
you missed me, too?"
She could not speak. She dared not. Words were
thronging behind her clenched teeth which it would
have been madness to utter. She seemed to be standing
outside herself, and she was amazed at what she was
watching. A shiver passed over her. Alfreda closed her
eyes, and as he put his arms about her, felt as though
she could have struck the face bending down to kiss
her, and struck it again and again. Hard.
"Why did you leave me?" she asked in a low whisper.
"Because I wanted to be sure. And to give you time
to be sure too," he replied gravely. "I am sure now.
Will you marry me, darling?"
"No!" she said with a sort of shout, and then saw
her mother come into the room. Mrs. Longstaff jumped.
"Alfreda! Mr. Gilmour!"
"Mrs. Longstaff, I've come back to marry the dearest
girl in the world."


32 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Mrs. Longstaff could not conceive of Alfreda in
quite that light. "Indeed?" was all she could say for the
moment, then came the knowledge of all that this would
mean. Only last week the charwoman had ventured to
speak pityingly of "Miss Freda" for being so lonely.
Her daughter well married. . . . Gilmour was in the
Civil Service, and had ample pay . . . there would be
no pension for his wife, but he would, of course, carry
a handsome life insurance . . .
"My dear children," said Mrs. Longstaff and gave a
hand to each. Alfreda took it, and committed herself.
After all, anything was better than the life she had
been leadings—the life with no outlook. Yet she felt for
Gilmour only burning resentment. He could have spared
her all this, these wounds to her pride, and yet he had
not. She would never forgive him. But she would use
him. He should be her stepping-stone to something dif-
ferent—larger. She told herself that she did not even
believe in his supposed affection for her. It had suited
him to play with her and leave her. It now suited him
to come back to her . . . what was he saying? He
wanted her to come and spend a fortnight in town at a
big house in Chelsea which he and some friends had
taken furnished for a few weeks. There was a lady
staying there, a Mrs. Pratt, who would chaperone her.
Perhaps Mrs. Longstaff would ring her up on the
'phone, the number was Flaxman 0000, and perhaps
Alfreda would come back with him now, his car could
wait. He had really gone into the friendly syndicate
because he thought how heavenly it would be to have
Alfreda up in town, staying in what would be, for a
week, his house. He explained the idea to the two


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 33
women, and Mrs. Longstaff went to the telephone and
was soon in talk with Mrs. Pratt.
Mrs. Pratt was charming. She had taken such a lik-
ing to young Lawrence Gilmour, "a really delightful
young man," and would be very pleased to chaperone
Miss Longstaff during her stay at The Tall House.
She hoped she could come soon. Her own daughter
was there too. In fact, another engagement was ex-
pected . . . the two women chatted most pleasantly.
In the veranda Gilmour pleaded his cause.
"I thought, I hoped, I believed you felt as I did,"
he stammered.
"And you shall suffer as I did!" was her unspoken
addition. Aloud she said, "I'll come to The Tall House
for a fortnight since you ask me, but I don't promise
to marry you, you know. At the end of the time I'll
give you my answer."
"Oh, no, no!" he begged. "Surely I've left you time
enough to know your own heart. Why, I brought you
down this!" He opened a small case and something in-
side it flashed. Alfreda, for the first time, felt one of
the bands of ice around her heart break with a little
splintering sound, like the girl in the fairy tale . . .
he must really love her to have bought her this . . .
it was a charming half-hoop of diamonds. For a second
she wavered. A month ago how she would have rejoiced.
But four weeks of suffering leave a scar . . . she
closed the case with a snap, and returned it to him.
"I'll give you my answer at the end of the fortnight,"
she said quietly, "and meanwhile I'm to be quite free.
I promise nothing, except to come to town." Let him,
too, feel the pleasure of uncertainty. "Is that agreed?"


34 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
It was not in the least what he hoped and wanted.
But something in her tone warned him not to press her,
unless he wanted to lose her. As for Alfreda, suddenly
she knew what she wanted. She would go to town for
the two weeks, and by hook or by crook at the end of
them land a job on a newspaper. As for marriage—she
had only wanted it as a key to open the world outside
Bispham. Perhaps she could open it for herself by her-
self.
She refused to go back in his car with Gilmour, and
her mother upheld her in this. After all, tomorrow
would do quite nicely and one evening would give the
two women and a seamstress time enough to alter that
frightful evening frock that Alfreda had ordered from
the sales because it was so cheap. ... So Gilmour
went off alone, but with the promise that Alfreda would
come to town on the following day in time for lunch.
He had no doubt as to her ultimate answer, and de-
cided that it was only her girlish way of paying him
out for his delay in proposing, little dreaming how
exactly he had hit the nail on the head, and yet how
he had given it a slant quite off the true. He wanted
to tell all the house-party about her, and burst out
with the news to Moy that evening after dinner. They
were playing billiards together.
"I can't keep it to myself!" Gilmour was playing
wildly. "I've as good as got engaged to the dearest
girl in the world, and she's coming here on a fort-
night's visit. It's still Haliburton's week, but he's an
awfully understanding chap . . . I'm not worthy to tie
Alfreda's shoe-strings, but—well"—he gave a choked
little laugh, "she'll be here in time for lunch tomorrow."


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 35
Moy was intensely interested. How would this Alfreda
and the lovely Winnie get on together? He hoped there
would be no unpleasantness. So far, things had been
such a success. Even Frederick Ingram's presence now
and then had done no harm. He was dropping in more
frequently with papers for Charles, and would some-
times stay and have a chat or even a bite with the
house-party . . . yes, he repeated to himself, every-
thing was going on splendidly. As for Haliburton's
kindness in letting Gilmour ask this girl up, Moy liked
Haliburton, but in this instance he saw no reason to
fall over backwards because of his altruism. Ingram
too must be charmed with the notion, he thought. Just
then the door opened, and Ingram, looking anything
but charmed, stepped in.
"I heard voices, and thought my brother-in-law was
here," he explained. "Why do one's relations always
want to see one?" he asked in what might be assumed
discomfort as he closed the door on himself.
"I'm afraid, if rumor is correct in the case of this
particular brother-in-law, it's because he hopes to
touch Ingram for a fiver," Gilmour suggested with a
grin. Moy nodded agreement. "What between Frederick
and his brother-in-law Edward Appleton, Ingram must
have plenty of use for his spare cash."
"Yet he was once a first-class actor, I've been told,"
he said.
"He's a first-class gambler now." Gilmour bent over
the table again. "The two don't see much of each other.
I don't think Appleton has been to the flat more than
twice this year. Now, as to Frederick, he'd live on
Ingram's doorstep if he could. After all, poor Apple-


36
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
ton's no one's enemy but his own. Whereas Frederick
is a regular out-and-out wrong un.”
"It was you who stopped Ingram from putting his
money into that silver-fox ranch, wasn't it?” Moy
asked. “Ingram consulted us, and, of course, we advised
against it. But I rather thought he would do it, until
he mentioned next time that you'd shown him regular
proofs that it was all a clever swindle.”
Gilmour's teeth flashed out of his tanned face for a
second. “I showed Frederick up proper, as the Tom-
mies say, and enjoyed it. Mind you, on paper the
scheme was beautifully worked out ..."
“It was.” Moy remembered it. “We only advised
caution on principle and Ingram refused to hear a
word against it at first. Frederick had pleaded with
him for a chance to earn an honest living, and Ingram
thought if he could settle him in the wilds of Scotland
it would be cheap at any price.”
“I hated to destroy his dreams of a future home with-
out any Frederick around the corner," Gilmour said
sadly, “but I had to do it.”
“Did Frederick thank you for it?” Moy asked, grin-
ning in his turn.
“At any rate, he's not the kind to bear malice,”
Gilmour said easily.
Moy raised his eyebrows. “Think so? For a couple
of years, I wouldn't go strolling along the edge of a
volcano with him if I were you. Nor play at who can
stay down longest under water.” But he too was only
chaffing and after a few more words about Miss Long-
staff, Gilmour went in search of Mrs. Pratt.
Meanwhile Ingram had found his brother-in-law. He


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 37
shook hands, with the look of a man steeling himself
against something—himself, or his visitor.
Appleton looked at him very sharply as their fingers
touched. Appleton had been a handsome man once, in
a rather flamboyant way, and he still carried himself
well. But everything about him twitched these days.
His face was never still, and when for a moment his
features seemed to rest, he would fall to pinching his
ear or rubbing his nose with his thin, curved fingers.
The hands were those of a fever patient, one would say,
so hollow were the backs, so ridged and dry the nails.
He stood looking at the other, as though longing to
plunge into some all-absorbing subject of his own, and
yet not quite daring to do so. Ingram caught the glance
and shook his head with an almost apologetic smile.
"Don't let's talk of it, Edward, there's a good fel-
low. It's far too dangerous a gift. My sister would never
forgive me for one thing. And now, what about cock-
tails? Will you have them in here or in the garden?"
Appleton did not speak for a moment; he was stand-
ing with his face turned to the fireplace, his back to
Ingram. After a short pause he said that he would
rather stay where they were and, so saying, he began
to examine some of the prints on the walls. From them
he passed to the furniture. He seemed so appreciative
of both that Ingram, apparently anxious to make up
for his very definite refusal of something much wanted
by the other, took him upstairs, and showed him the
floor on which his own bedroom was.
Appleton seemed greatly interested. "I wonder if the
chap who owns these would be willing to sell anything,"
he murmured. Ingram knew that Appleton often actpd


38 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
as intermediary in such transactions. The one-time
actor had long ago run through the fortune left hire
and, except for his wife's steady income, his household
would have been in straights long ago. Ingram had
helped Appleton many a time, and would do so many a
time more, but not to any large amount. He had learned
that that was folly.
He did not feel at liberty to show him the inside of
any of the rooms except his own and Gilmour's, who,
he knew, would not mind all the world tramping through
his quarters. As it was, the two rooms and the corridor
kept them quite a while, for Appleton seemed to have a
passion for trying to date furniture. He suggested once
or twice that his brother-in-law should leave him, but
Ingram assured him that at the moment he had the
time to spare. But at last he grew restive and frankly
glanced at the clock on the landing below them. Apple-
ton caught the glance. Ingram apologized. "I had no
idea the time had flown so," he said then. "As a matter
of fact I am rather rushing some work to its end—and
to the printers. So if you really won't stop and have a
drink? ..."
Appleton said that he too was rather in a hurry,
and took himself off, after insisting that Ingram should
not come down with him.
Moy happened to be coming down the stairs as Ap-
pleton was shown out. In the shadowy recess of the
landing sat Tark, his head bent over his note-book. He
seemed to have as much love for figures as had Ingram.
Whenever Moy ran across him, if he was by himself,
Tark would be writing in his rather large note-book
what looked like sets of figures. He would do this in


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 39
the oddest places, perched on the side of a tub, squat-
ting on the stairs or astride the window ledge. Wherever
an idea struck him, if idea it was, Tark would bring
out his note-book and well-sharpened pencil, and seem
to lose the world for some few minutes. He never ap-
peared to be afraid of being overlooked, though, as far
as Moy knew, he never talked of what he was entering
with such care.
As Appleton took his hat from the butler he turned
and faced the landing. At the same second Tark looked
down to the front door. The two men looked at one
another. It was an odd look, Moy thought, to pass be-
tween a couple of strangers, or mere acquaintances. It
was so straight and so long and so utterly blank. Then
the door closed behind Appleton and Tark, putting his
note-book away, ran lightly down the stairs into a little
room on the left of the front door. As it happened,
Moy was on his way to the room on the right, and there,
thinking of Appleton and Tark and that silent look, he
glanced through the window netting. Appleton was
lighting a cigarette on the pavement. He was just out-
side the window of the room where Tark was and, as
he threw away the match, he looked at it and shook
his head with a quick but decided shake, then he walked
on. Moy told himself that writing plays, or trying to
write them, was bad for one's brain. Appleton was al-
ways shaking his head or twitching his forehead or
whisking something invisible off his cheek. And as for
Tark, his indifference towards his fellow-men was quite
real, Moy felt certain, and went to the bone. It was
no acquired armor. True, he had seemed at first de-
sirous of talking to Ingram, but that desire was so


40
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
patently not shared by the mathematician that Tark
seemed to have quite given up all attempts to have a
word alone with him, and now to include Ingram in his
cold lack of interest.


FOUR
Even Tark looked quite alert, for him, next day when
he came to lunch. Gilmour and his fiancee—for so the
household called her—had not yet come in. Mrs. Pratt
was radiant and chatting gaily to everyone. Winnie
was silent, but her cheeks glowed with so vivid a rose
and the color faded so noticeably as the minutes passed
that Moy wondered whether Mrs. Pratt had just
slapped them. A slanderous thought. They were due to
firm applications of a sponge and hot water. When
Winnie did talk it was to Ingram, ignoring Haliburton.
Then the door opened and there fell an absolute hush
as Gilmour and a lithe, dark-haired, pale girl came in.
Every eye was riveted on Alfreda. Even Ingram who
had heard her name mentioned in connection with Gil-
mour some time ago, had never met her, managed to
be looking at the door. He was curious to see the face
that could eclipse the beauty of Winnie Pratt's. Miss
Longstaff stood a second half-smiling at the interest
that met her. It was an enigmatic smile, Moy thought.
And a rather enigmatic face. Perhaps that was what
41


42 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
had attracted Gilmour, who began to introduce her to
Mrs. Pratt in a boyish way that was very taking.
As for Ingram, he could hardly believe his eyes. He
had known beforehand that she would fall short of
Winnie's standard, but that this elfish, peaky-faced
chit could keep a man from realizing the loveliness of
Winnie—why Gilmour must be blind! Haliburton
thought the same. Moy too was disappointed. Yet he
could see something, that, supposing it appealed to
you, would be found in Alfreda's face but not in Win-
nie's. For one thing Miss Longstaff looked clever, he
thought, also discontented—or was it merely dissatis-
fied? She talked well at lunch, with an air of doing
so for her own amusement, not merely to brighten
the lives of others. Mrs. Pratt alone had welcomed the
newcomer warmly. As for her daughter, after one swift
glance at the other girl, she ignored her. Gilmour did
not seem even to remember Winnie's existence as he
devoted himself to the girl now seated beside him. Once
when Gilmour got up to lay her gloves aside for her,
she followed his figure with a look that intrigued Moy.
There was not a spark of affection in that glance, he
would have said, only something coldly inquisitive. She
caught his own meditative look full, and in return fixed
her own dark, unfathomable stare on him. Neither
seemed to wish to be the first to look away. Then she
finally turned her head aside to Miss Pratt. Looking at
the beautiful curve of the slightly averted fair head
there came into Alfreda's face a smile that showed un-
expectedly strong white teeth, and there was something
else, something sardonic, Moy fancied for an instant,
before the smile passed. Miss Pratt seemed to sense it


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 43
too, for she looked around swiftly, came to life, and
began to chat and laugh, and finally went off gaily
with Alfreda for a trial on the tennis court. There was
no question as to who was the better player. Miss Long-
staff seemed to have tireless muscles. Moy, watching
with the other men, decided that she was playing Miss
Pratt as well as the game. She sent her merciless balls
at merciless angles and made a pace with which Winnie
could not possibly cope. But Winnie fought with un-
expected pluck and grit. She did not let any game go
without a struggle. At the end, hopeless though it was,
she was playing better than at first, that mark of the
good fighter. One advantage she had. She looked like a
child of sixteen with her tumbled curls against her
softly flushed little face. It was wet with exertion, but
it only looked like the dew on a flower. Miss Longstaff
showed no hint of color in her thin pale cheeks, but she
shot a glance at the other when the set was over that
looked vexed, Moy thought, and as though something
had not turned out quite as she meant it to. Fortu-
nately Winnie took it all with great dignity, Moy
thought, until later when he went into the hall to con-
sult an A.B.C. on a side table. From a room beside him
a voice which he knew was Winnie's and yet which he
hardly recognized as hers.
She was saying: "I won't let her have him! It's no
use, mother. She shan't have him!"
"Haven't you got any pride?" came in withering
tones from her mother. At least Moy called the tones
withering, but Winnie survived. For she said still in
that tense, desperate voice: "I won't give him up to
her! She doesn't love him. Oh, mother, if it came to a


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
test between us, he would see which of us really loved
him! A real test would soon prove"
"I don't recognize you," Mrs. Pratt interrupted in a
voice that suggested a genuine difficulty to do this. "He
doesn't care for you. He loves this charming young
girl."
"Young girl! She's old enough to be his m—well,
she's over thirty." Winnie had evidently realized that
by no stretch of dislike could Alfreda be Gilmour's
mother.
"She's about three years older than you in years I
fancy, my dear, but a lot in sense," her mother replied.
"The trouble with you, Winnie, is that you're spoiled.
You've always had what you wanted, so you're tired of
what you can get, and are hankering after what you
can't have. Let me tell you, my dear girl, there's noth-
ing more fatal to happiness in man or woman." Mrs.
Pratt spoke with real feeling. "The fox was wise who
said the grapes he couldn't have were sour. A fool would
have set his heart on them just because he couldn't have
them. That's what you're doing."
"I'm not! Lawrence Gilmour would love me if I only
could show him"
"You've shown him sufficiently, and everyone else too.
Come, Winnie, pull yourself together. Have some pride.
Haliburton wants to marry you. But if you keep this
sort of thing up he won't feel like that much longer.
You ought to show Lawrence Gilmour that though he
may not care forvyou, others do." Mrs. Pratt's tactics
were too transparent to succeed, Moy feared. He him-
self at the moment was no more conscious of the im-
propriety of listening than if he had been at a theater.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 45
“But I like Charles Ingram better.” Miss Pratt
sounded as though she was smiling again. “And he too
wants to marry me.”
Moy had taken a step sideways and could now see
into the room. Mrs. Pratt's face startled him. She stood
looking down on the bent head of Winnie as the girl
fiddled with something on the mantel as though she
could burst out into a perfect flame of violence-vitu-
peration-despair-pleading—but by an effort that
was patently all but beyond her, she bit her lip in silence
and led the way out through a farther door.
Two mornings later, Alfreda told Gilmour that she
would not be able to go with him to a dog show as they
had planned, or rather as he had planned for her.
"I've got so much fitting-out to do,” she said with
one of her unfriendly smiles, “and shan't be visible until
one o'clock today." She seemed to have an early morn-
ing appointment, for it was only half-past eight when
she left the house. She took some care to see that she
was not followed, rather an odd idea one would have
said, but she saw no one, and tests such as jumping on
to a bus at the last moment and off when all but started,
which reduced two conductors to close on apoplexy,
assured her that no one had any interest in her move-
ments. That ascertained, she made for a tube which
landed her at Hammersmith Broadway. Here she
turned into a street that was once lived in by city men
who wanted the country. At a house with a black door
and orange-painted pillars, she ran up the steps, in-
serted a latch-key with which she did not seem at all
familiar, and finally let herself into a hall. A woman in


46 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
a rather elaborate frock for the morning came forward
with a mixture of graciousness and condescension.
"Miss Gray, isn't it? Your room's all ready for you.
But wouldn't you like to write in the lounge? As I told
you yesterday afternoon when you took the room, no
one will disturb you there, only Mrs. Findlay ever uses
it at this hour, and you'll find it warm and cosy. Better
than being in the basement, don't you think?"
"Thanks awfully, I'll try it," Alfreda said brightly.
And in a corner of a glassed-in lounge she ensconced
herself, writing-pad on knee. But she did not write
much. Her dark eyes flashed to and fro about the main
corridor which showed through the side of the lounge.
Presently the manageress entered with a big stout
woman of middle age, who wore a sort of mantilla of
black lace on her head fastened to her white hair in
front with a large silver star and floating below her
waist at the back. Two corkscrew ringlets dangled
over each ear.
"This is Miss Gray." The manageress steered the
older woman to the newcomer's corner. "She's inter-
ested in disarmament too, Mrs. Findlay, so I thought
you and she would be congenial spirits." And the man-
ageress left them.
"Oh, do you care too?" Alfreda asked eagerly, scan-
ning the woman in front of her closely. "I didn't know
anyone cared—really. Anyone but myself and the man
I'm engaged to, Lawrence Gilmour."
"Lots of people care," Mrs. Findlay answered a trifle
coldly. She had rather a forbidding eye and jaw. The
woman was one of those people who are often pitied for
being solitary, but who are that by choice. True, she


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 47
had outlived all her family, and was practically alone
in the world, but had she had a host of relations the
result would have been the same. Now, after a few
moments' silence, she made as if to go out again, but
Alfreda sprang up.
"Don't go!" she said appealingly. "I'm so frightfully
pleased to have met someone who can tell me about
"what we women can do. The idea of all these war
preparations is awful. Surely, if we band together, we
can be of some use."
Mrs. Findlay was conquered for the moment. This
was her hobby, or rather it was more than that. It was
the window through which her soul drew in a little air
and light and so managed to exist in the desert that she
had made of the rest of her life. At first reluctantly,
then more freely, she let Alfreda draw her out on the
subject. Alfreda for her part listened as though to a
Sibyl.
"Oh, I would like to join!" she breathed, when Mrs.
Findlay mentioned the Women's Peace Movement, of
which she was an honorary secretary. "So would Law-
rence—Mr. Gilmour. I think you must have seen him at
some of the meetings "and she described Gilmour.
Mrs. Findlay looked a trifle impatient. She said that
she had not seen any young man at any of their meet-
ings. Something quivered across Alfreda's face and
was gone, but whether she wanted to hear an affirma-
tive, or the negative that had been forthcoming, it was
difficult to say.
At ten she put her papers together. "I write, you
know," she murmured. "Just little things of no account.


48 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
But I might be able to get in some article which would
help."
This time it was Mrs. Findlay who looked eager and,
on hearing that Alfreda expected to be in the lounge
on the following morning at the same hour, said that
she would like to continue their talk. Alfreda put her
blank paper away in the little basement room that she
had taken late yesterday afternoon and hurried to the
door. But the manageress stopped her.
"I saw you having quite a nice chat," she said pleas-
antly, "and to no one else does Mrs. Findlay ever open
her mouth. I told her it would be a change for her to
meet someone who shared her interests. Generally she
just sits there while her room is being aired, and we
daren't talk to her."
Alfreda nodded and hurried off, her face a mixture
of emotions; she jumped on a bus that would take her
close to The Tall House, satisfaction and dissatisfac-
tion were to be read in her quick, dark eyes. But at nine
on the following day she was in the lounge again, and
again she and Mrs. Findlay talked of peace, and of how
to stop the preparations for war that were darkening
all the world.
The next morning after that Mrs. Findlay referred
to some books she had in her room, and Alfreda seemed
so keen on seeing them that, after a second's hesitation,
she asked the younger woman in to a large dreary bed-
sitting-room as it is called. The books in question were
stacked on a table, and Alfreda promptly took off the
top one.
"May I take this home and read it?" she begged.
"I'll bring it back tomorrow morning."


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 49
'Tomorrow a friend is coming to see me about this
time," Mrs. Findlay sjaid in her stiff way. "As a matter
of fact he too has just read that book."
"Can't I run in and hand it to you?" Alfreda asked,
her face all innocence.
"I'm afraid my friend is elderly, and has so few
minutes to spare, and counts too much on finding me
alone," Mrs. Findlay said coldly, and she remained
very cool for the rest of the time that Alfreda as usual
spent with her, and when the girl left with the book,
rather earlier than usual, Mrs. Findlay stopped for a
word with the manageress in the hall.
"That Miss Gray who's just come seems rather a
pushing young person," was her remark. "I'm afraid
she'd be quite a nuisance if I weren't leaving next week.
Please don't let her know I'm going; she's quite capable
of asking herself down to my cottage in the country."
"I wouldn't breathe a word about your going," the
manageress assured her. Mrs. Findlay had the largest
room in the house, had taken it at a time when rents
were at their highest, and, therefore, paid nearly double
what it would now bring. Besides, she was leaving, she
had just had an unexpected windfall, and the man-
ageress hoped that some parting present might
brighten her own none too gay lot.
"How did she come to speak to you about me in the
first place?" Mrs. Findlay asked.
"She came in just after you the other afternoon. She
was looking for a room, and after she had taken hers,
we stood a moment chatting, and she said she thought
she had seen you at Spiritualistic stances near here.
I told her I didn't think that at all likely."


50 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
"Preposterous!" chimed in Mrs. Findlay.
"She said something about the star you wear, and I
told her that was the Star of Peace, and that you were
tremendously keen on there being no more wars, and
disarmament and so on. . . . She hardly let me finish,
she was so eager to tell me that she and a gentleman
friend, a Mr. Gil—something, I think that was the
name, were both so keen on that too. She said she'd like
ever so much to have a chance of talking to you. That
you looked so clever she'd love to hear your views."
Mrs. Findlay's face relaxed.
"Well, of course, it was quite natural, under the cir-
cumstances I mean, for you to have introduced her that
first morning . . . the truth is," Mrs. Findlay lowered
her voice, "I wondered if she had got on the track of
that little money I came into so unexpectedly the other
day . . . it's to be paid me shortly and I "she
stopped herself.
"Oh, no! No one knows about that! You said it was
strictly confidential!" the manageress assured her. "I
do hope this Miss Gray hasn't been troublesome. She
seemed quite the lady."
"Oh, I don't doubt it's all right, just youthful fer-
vor"—Mrs. Findlay smiled a little at her—"but some-
how, it seemed to me so sudden . . . and so very
pronounced . . ." She half-stopped herself. "I felt
doubtful of her sincerity," she finished, "but, as you
say, it's probably just her way. But don't let her take
to coming to my room. Should she ever speak to you
about it, while I'm still here, please discourage her. I
did ask her there just now in a moment of weakness, but
she's such a stayer . . . and I'm so busy getting my


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 51
things together . . . she spoke of coming in tomorrow
morning, for instance, but I told her I should be en-
gaged. Poor old Mr. Nevern would be quite swamped
by her. It's his day to drop in for an hour . . ." and
with a nod Mrs. Findlay swept on to her room and
castle.
The manageress passed the conversation on to the
head housemaid, her trusted assistant.
"Funny!" that young woman murmured. "I mean
Miss Gray being so keen on Mrs. Findlay. She's not
everybody's fancy, is she? I wonder if she has heard
about that money and is making up to Mrs. Findlay
because of it."
"She can't possibly know. And don't forget, you
don't know anything about it, either!" the manageress
warned her.
"Mrs. Findlay told me about it herself, just now.
Said she had come in quite unexpectedly for some
money and might easily come in for more. Said she was
going round the world. I said I didn't wonder. I'd go
round the world twice over if only someone would leave
me a five-pound note for doing it. Wouldn't you?" and
the talk drifted to what one would do if one came into
wealth.
As the days passed, Winnie and Alfreda avoided each
other, but when they met they were quite civil, especially
Alfreda, who went out of her way to be nice to the
other. She openly admired her beauty, and spoke of
feeling as though Winnie were a lovely flower to be
shielded from rough winds, something fragile that no
tempest should touch. This much was gained by Al-
freda's presence, that Miss Pratt spoke very little to


52 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Gilmour. She really retired into something resembling
polite sulks, talking to Ingram, but hardly deigning to
see Haliburton, and spending most of her time at other
houses. As for Miss Longstaff, Moy thought her in her
own way as aloof as Tark, but with something watchful
added. She would fix that odd unreadable stare of hers
now on one, now on another of the house party as
though trying to understand something which puzzled
her.
Frederick Ingram came more frequently to the house
now. He avoided Gilmour as much as possible, but
when the two met they seemed to be able to meet on
a footing of indifferent civility. Miss Longstaff ap-
peared rather to like Frederick, and as that young
man was fond of an audience, he would often be found
by her side if Miss Pratt were out of reach. He did not
stay at The Tall House, but came and went, taking and
bringing papers to his half-brother.
It was just a little over a week after Alfreda's arrival
when all happened to be in the lounge around six. The
cocktails had been handed about, and the talk turned
on ghosts. No one afterwards seemed able to remember
exactly how it started. Someone—Moy said he thought
it was Tark, Tark said it was Haliburton, Haliburton
maintained that it was Frederick, Frederick insisted
that it was Gilmour, and Gilmour said that he felt sure
it was Ingram—mentioned that a man whom he had
met lately had spoken to him of what a splendid display
Appleton used to give as a ghost in a Grand Guignol
play. But all agreed that it was Frederick who said
that The Tall House had a ghost, that one of its former
owners had been found hanged. It was suspected though


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 53
never proved that his valet did the hanging. The old
man's ghost was said to walk.
Ingram said that a ghost was always part of the
furniture of an old house, and asked Moy whether on
the expiration of a tenancy it had to be handed back in
the same condition as when taken over.
"Fair wear and tear excepted," Moy said at once,
amid laughter.
"A safe provision," Haliburton pointed out, "as
nothing could damage ghostly bones or clothes, not even
bullets."
"The ghost had better not bank on that," Gilmour
said with a most unaccustomed edge to his voice. "Per-
sonally, if I meet one, I shall fire at sight."
Something in his tone made the group fall silent.
"How will you let the ghost know of its danger
beforehand?" Winnie asked with one of her tinkling
laughs. "By a notice to the Psychical Society?"
"I think I have given notice by what I am saying."
Gilmour's tone was still hard. "There aren't such things
as real ghosts, there are only practical jokers. And, as
I say, I warn any joker here that that particular piece
of foolishness isn't a safe one to play on me."
"You seem rather warm about it," Ingram said
dryly.
"Sorry!" Gilmour's tanned face looked apologetic.
"I'm afraid I did rather get on my hind legs, but I was
badly frightened by a so-called ghost as a kid, and the
mere mention of them makes me see red ever since."
He looked round for Miss Longstaff. But that young
lady had moved behind him to an open window. She
was standing very rigid, her head and chin stuck out


54 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
at an angle that was not at all pretty, but which sug-
gested breathless excitement. One hand was fingering
a string of beads she wore; it had an effect of being
pressed against her heart. Moy remembered afterward*
that not till the talk changed did she relax that ab-
sorbed pose of hers. Gilmour, still without seeing her,
rose and left the lounge. Frederick Ingram followed him
for a moment.
"He means it right enough," he said, coming back.
"He's got it into his head that one of us is going to
play that same prank on him again, and he wants
everyone to know that he really intends to shoot at
sight. I think he suspects me."
"Is he a good shot?" Tark asked in his creaky, ex-
pressionless voice. Everyone laughed.
"Very," Ingram spoke up now. "Very," he repeated,
looking sharply at his brother. "But I don't think I'm
giving anyone much of a surprise when I add that his
revolver is loaded with blank."
"Blank or loaded, I have no intention of amusing
Gilmour," Frederick said promptly. "But it's as well
for the rest of you to know that you needn't drop on
the floor when you hear a bang."
Ingram turned away and picked up a book near him.
When he was not writing he was sure to be reading,
Winnie had once told him. She crossed to his side now.
"I can't imagine you without books." She smiled at
him one of her softest, most radiant smiles.
"Let's take a turn in the fresh air," he said under
his breath. "Somehow the air in here's a bit hot . . .
electric . . . but as to being without books, there are
other things I couldn't live without. When this month


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 55
is up, Winnie"—he had never called her by her first
name before—"how are you going to choose?"
"My mother wants me to marry Basil Haliburton,"
she said evasively.
"Are you going to?" he asked, standing still and
taking hold of a spray of Bokhara vine.
"You've spoiled matters," she said with one of her
most flirtatious upward glances. "But for you, I
shouldn't have hesitated. Until you came, I felt so sure
I cared for him."
"What about Lawrence Gilmour?" The question
came before he could check it. She cocked a supercilious
chin at him.
"Lawrence Gilmour? Why, he's engaged. It isn't be-
cause of Mr. Gilmour that I'm not sure what I shall say
to Basil Haliburton."
Even the adoring Ingram looked a bit doubtful, and
the chin swept up still more.
"You alone complicate matters," she said softly and
yet rather wearily. As she spoke they turned a corner
and almost stepped on Haliburton himself. It was an
awkward meeting. Even Winnie was nonplussed for a
second, then she made some remark about the flowers,
and the evening light, and the young man took it up
pleasantly, but he avoided looking, or speaking, directly
to Ingram.


FIFE
That night Moy was awakened by the last sound that
the young solicitor ever expected to hear in a house—
the sound of a shot. With it came a loud cry and then
a thud.
Still rigid with bewilderment, he heard a sort of sob-
bing falsetto:
"Where's the light? God, where's the switch?" The
voice seemed that of a stranger and yet there was some-
thing about it which reminded him of Gilmour.
Moy came to life and sprang out of bed. He rushes
into the passage. Bright moonlight flooded it. Just in
front of him was the big main passage leading down to
Gilmour's room, the door of which faced him across the
landing at the farther end. Halfway down the passage
was Ingram's room and it was in front of that room
that something bulky and white was lying.
Coming towards Moy and towards the heap on the
ground, staggering as though he were drunk, and claw-
ing at the wall with his left hand, was a man it
pajamas. The right hand was outstretched and helc
something small that glittered in the cold, white light
56


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 57
glittered all the more because it wavered and swung to
and fro, as though the arm were a broken signpost in
a gale of wind. In the moonlight the man's face showed
so blanched, so distorted with its protruding eyeballs
and open mouth that Moy thought it was a stranger's
for a moment. Then he saw it was Gilmour. Just by the
white heap on the floor both almost collided with each
other. Their hands met and closed on a switch. At the
same instant other voices, men's voices, called out to
know what was wrong, and lights blazed out in the
cross passages.
Moy and Gilmour were both on their knees beside
that motionless heap on the ground. It was heavy, and
seemed to be wrapped in sheeting, but at last Moy got
hold of a loose end of the stuff and flung it back—to
show the dead face of Ingram, with a small red hole in
the exact center of the forehead. He was still warm, still
flexible. Moy stared down at him in horror. Yet there
was nothing horrifying in the face itself. On the con-
trary it was beautiful in its own marble way, with a
certain grand air of peace, profound and real.
"A doctor! A doctor!" Gilmour almost sobbed. "It's
some awful mistake—it can't be! It was.loaded with
blank!"
Moy heard a sort of shocked cluck over his shoulder.
It was Haliburton who was now bending down beside
him.
"He can't be dead! The cartridges were blanks, I
tell you. Where's a doctor? One hears of people being
resuscitated after hours "Gilmour was all but in-
articulate, and was shaking violently. The revolver
dropped from his grip as he spoke, and he pushed it to


58
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
one side while he tried to raise Ingram's head and turn
it to the light.
“A doctor will be fetched at once,” Moy spoke in a
whisper. This was a most dreadful affair. “But how did
it happen? Where was Ingram? I mean, when you
fired?”
The solicitor in Moy was seeking data, but Halibur-
ton touched him on the shoulder.
“We must get a doctor here at once !"
They were in front of Ingram's own room. It had a
telephone in it. Gilmour caught it up with shaking
fingers. Then he turned his face to the others. He
looked like a man living in a nightmare.
“I–I can't remember the name of any doctor.
Quick! Who knows one? And what his number is ?”
Moy reached for the directory. The shock had driven
his own doctor's number out of his mind too, but Hali-
burton, with a sympathetic glance at Gilmour, took the
receiver from him and in a steady firm tone gave the
Mayfair number of his father's physician.
Moy laid down the directory. As he did so, he saw
Tark just inside the door which he was holding open.
But a Tark with all his usual air of sardonic detach-
ment shed. This was Tark with the lid off, Moy decided,
and the inside of the man seemed to be a seething
cauldron. Neither then nor afterwards could Moy name
the emotions that he saw frothing up together. In al-
most the same instant Tark stepped back, shutting the
door noiselessly behind him, but not before Moy saw, on
the stairs behind, hanging as it were like a moon in the
darkness, a girl's white face and recognized it as Al-
freda Longstaff.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 59
"Look here," Moy said again while Haliburton was
trying to rouse the household of the great man in Har-
ley Street, "how did it happen, Gilmour?"
"I fired at a ghost, a blank cartridge, and then I
heard it cry out, and "Gilmour stopped and sank
into a chair, covering his face with his hands.
"Where's the revolver?" Moy urged. It was partly
kindness. He thought that anything was better than
letting Gilmour live over in memory what had just
happened. Gilmour did not lift his head. Moy, on the
instant that he spoke, remembered the little glittering
thing dropping beside Ingram's body, and, opening the
door, now stepped into the passage again. He almost
trod on Miss Longstaff, who, the revolver in her hands,
was turning away from the body on the carpet. On her
face was the last look that Moy expected to see, a look
as unexpected as the shot had been, for it had in it a
sort of vindictive satisfaction; a sort of excited gloat-
ing, he called it to himself afterwards.
"Hand me that revolver, please," he said sharply.
"Is it yours?" she asked.
"I represent the absent owner of the house. And I
represent Ingram's relatives. Hand me that weapon,
please."
She let him have it, though reluctantly.
He broke it open. All five remaining cartridges
seemed to be blank.
"How did it happen? Who shot him?" she asked, and
again there was that suggestion of eagerness about her
that was so ghoulish at such a moment.
"Do go back to your room," Moy urged. "This is no
place for a girl. As you can see, there's been an awful


60 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
accident, and Ingram's been shot.” Suddenly he
stopped. He noticed now that Ingram's body now lay
covered by a sheet. He eyed Miss Longstaff inquir-
ingly.
"He looked so dreadful staring up,” she said, and
for the first time there was a hint of confusion in her
voice.
Ingram had not looked dreadful. This covered mound
was much more horrible.
“No one should touch him," Moy said with the same
sternness in his voice as when he had asked her for the
revolver.
“Why? Was it murder?” She drew a deep breath
and looked at him with that odd, unreadable stare of
hers. “Who shot him?” she persisted.
“I did,” came a dull voice from behind them. “I did,
Freda.” Gilmour had come out into the corridor again.
“Oh, please don't call me Freda, Mr. Gilmour," came
the instant reply. “There's no question of any future
engagement between us—after this. Of course, you
realize that too."
Gilmour looked as though she had struck him. His
white face went even whiter.
"You don't mean it! It's not possible! You can't
"he began in a strangled voice, taking an implor-
ing step towards her. Her answer was to turn her back
on him and walk away. As she did so there came the
swift rush of feet down the stairs. Miss Pratt, looking
a dream in a floating gown the color of sweet peas, ran
towards Gilmour, her two hands outstretched.
“Mr. Tark tells me oh Lawrence, I'm so sorry! So
sorry! For you!” She thrust her little white hands into


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 61
Gilmour's fists, who dropped the white fingers after the
most perfunctory touch and took a step after the other
slender figure, the one fully dressed, with the short
straight dark hair brushed smoothly back like a boy's
from the hard but vivid face.
"Alfreda! Miss Longstaff!" he began again. She
turned, and standing still, bent on him again that in-
scrutable stare of hers, and something in it was so
inimical that he stepped back and stood staring at her.
As she turned a corner, he at last looked at Winnie.
"You shouldn't be here. Your mother wouldn't like
it." He spoke as though his thoughts were quite else-
where.
Alfreda had gone straight to Mrs. Pratt's rooms.
She knocked at the bedroom door .and called through
the panels. "It's me, Mrs. Pratt, Alfreda Longstaff.
Something has happened. Your daughter needs you."
There came a muffled sort of squeak from within, but
the door was not opened for quite a long minute.
Then Mrs. Pratt stepped out. "What's that about
Winnie? Where is she? What on earth has happened?"
Her face looked oddly blotched as though some strap-
ping or top dressing had been roughly pulled off.
"Mr. Gilmour has killed Mr. Ingram, and your
daughter is telling him how sorry she is for him." The
tone was dry.
There was nothing muffled about Mrs. Pratt's squeak
this time. "Winnie, where are you? Wait for me!
Wait!" And as though a performance were about to
begin which she would not miss for worlds, she scurried
in the direction of Alfreda's pointing hand. In front of
Ingram's bedroom she stopped in horror. For once she


62
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
had nothing to say for a full minute. Then she turned
to Winnie.
"Come, dearest, we're only in the way here. We must
get Yates up, and see to our packing. The kindest thing
we can do for everyone is to get away as soon as pos-
sible. Come, Winnie!"
"I won't leave now—like this." Winnie spoke indig-
nantly.
Mrs. Pratt turned to Moy. Her eyes asked her ques-
tions.
"Ingram played the part of a ghost and Gilmour
fired at him a blank cartridge, as he thought—which
must have been loaded. He's dead," he murmured, his
eyes on the white mound to whom the "he" referred.
Mrs. Pratt turned to Gilmour with what looked like
genuine emotion.
"Oh, you poor boy! You poor, poor boy! And, and
—how awful!" She did not try to put the rest of her
feelings into words.
Winnie let her mother lead her away. They found
Alfreda pacing their little sitting-room.
"I suppose you're leaving, too?" she asked, as Win-
nie hurried on to her own room with her lips pressed
together.
Mrs. Pratt closed the door. "I'm so sorry for you,
my dear girl," she began gently, "and so shocked—so
indescribably shocked for that poor boy!"
"We're not going to be engaged, if you refer to
Lawrence Gilmour," Alfreda said composedly.
"What?" Mrs. Pratt fairly jumped. "But surely!
But this is dreadfully sudden!" she finished lamely.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 63
"His shooting of Mr. Ingram was dreadfully sud-
den," was the reply.
"But surely, for a time, you'll let things stand over!"
Mrs. Pratt was almost pleading. "It will look so dread-
fully heartless, to drop him the very instant it hap-
pened."
"I have no intention, now or ever, of getting engaged
to Mr. Gilmour. I think you ought to know."
The door opened. Winnie came in. She could not stay
in any one place for long.
"You're acting horribly!" she began.
"I'm not acting at all." There was meaning in the
look the elder girl gave the younger. Winnie seemed to
pay no attention to it.
"He needs you!" she protested instead.
Mrs. Pratt nodded her head emphatically. Alfreda
shot the mother a glance openly mocking. But she said
nothing.
"I'd go through anything with the man I loved!"
came passionately from Winnie.
"Supposing he loved you," the other girl finished
dryly. "Perhaps it's just as well for you that Mr.
Gilmour doesn't seem to fill that condition."
Winnie's cheeks flamed.
"A girl would have to have a perfect passion for
notoriety to marry him after this," Alfreda went on.
The door slammed behind Winnie. Mrs. Pratt looked
half-gratefully, half-indignantly, at her visitor, who
gave her one of her odd stares and went out to run
lightly down into Ingram's study. She closed the door
noiselessly behind her. For a second she stood sniffing
the air. It smelled of . . . yes, of that odd tobacco


64 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Mr. Tark liked . . . but she had not come here to smell
tobacco. She slipped over to the bureau, found its top
unlocked, stood obviously listening for any sound from
outside and, hearing none, opened it and with swift,
deft fingers looked through it- Every scrap of paper
was glanced at. It was fairly empty. She turned over
the drawers. Only blank paper was in them with the
exception of the bottom drawer, which was locked. She
was pulling at it when she heard steps coming down the
back stairs close to the library door. Instantly she
slipped out of the door by which she had entered, into
the lounge and on up the stairs, along a passage, and
up another flight of stairs. Here she let herself into an
empty bedroom, and. closing its door to with the
utmost caution, sat down at a little bookcase table on
which stood a telephone extension. Very quietly she
gave a number. It was that of the proprietor of the
Morning Wire.
"Hello f came a man's voice in answer to her ring.
It was not the voice that she had heard on the golf
links. "What is it?"
"I want to speak to Mr. Warner."
"Who are you? What do you want to speak to him
about? I'm one of Mr. Warner's secretaries." The
voice was not encouraging.
"Will you tell Mr. Warner that the Miss Longstaff
who played a game of golf with him on the links at
Bispham is staying in a house at Chelsea with a Mr.
Ingram who has just been killed by his friend. The
friend claims that it was an accident."
"Ingram . . . what is his first name, do you know?"
"Charles."


66 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
be the scoop which you said would give me a post on
your paper?"
Warner had not said quite that. "She's probably just
trying it on," was his murmured comment to Ryland,
his secretary, "I mean, about its not being an accident
. . . but if there's anything in it . . . she struck me
as being a very resourceful young woman . . . and
unscrupulous as they're made." Warner added this last
thought as though it were an added point in her favor.
"Well?" she asked sharply, "have I the promise of
a post on the paper if I can prove what I claim? That
Mr. Gilmour's story can't be true?"
"If you can prove that, Miss Longstaff, we'll give
you a trial."
"I want the offer in writing," came her answer.
Warner, with a faint smile, told Ryland to write a
note which would do until the usual contract could be
sent. The draft was read her and she graciously deigned
to approve.
"It's not often a paper has such a chance offered it,"
she said.
"Nor an outsider either, Miss Longstaff," Warner
barked back.
"Oh, of course. These things have always to be
mutual," she murmured as cynically as an old company
promoter. "My name mustn't come out, of course.
That's to be absolutely guaranteed."
"I'll send one of my men down at once. Name of
Courtfield. Give him all the information you can. He'll
know how to put it into shape. Be on the look-out for
him and let him in yourself, if possible. He's a small
man—dark—turned-up nose—cleft in his chin. He'll


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 67
be wearing a big yellow buttonhole and will loiter about
on the pavement opposite The Tall House. You'll have
to prove all your assertions."
"I don't know about all," came Miss Longstaff's
voice, "but I shall be able to prove the one that matters
most."
"You'll have to prove, or be prepared to prove, any
we print," Warner said authoritatively. He thought
this young woman needed firmness.
"Personally, I shouldn't be surprised if she killed him
herself in order to get a chance with us." Warner's
hand was over the transmitter. "But Courtfield will
soon find out. . . ." He uncovered the instrument.
"Who else is staying in the house, Miss Longstaff?"
She told him. He passed it on, again with the trans-
mitter covered.
"Miss Winifred Pratt?" Ryland spelled it with one
"t" in his interest, "the Beauty? We have her picture
taken the night she was presented . . ."
"Ah," Warner murmured, "possibly she's the ex-
planation. Well, if so, Courtfield will find out. If the
beautiful Miss Pratt is roped in to the affair, so much
the more stir. I don't need to tell Courtfield to keep his
eye open for libel actions. Though I don't think Miss
Longstaff will cross the line. Too clever by half."


SIX
Meanwhile a hitch had occurred. The doctor to whom
Haliburton had telephoned was just getting into his
car, when an urgent summons reached him from a
patient who was hovering between life and death. He
dashed off to her bedside, and left his secretary to sug-
gest over the 'phone to Haliburton that, since death
had already occurred, and from an accident, Halibur-
ton had perhaps better send for the police. This would
have been suggested in the first place, had it not been
that important young man himself who had spoken
over the wire.
Habburton jerked his lower bp sideways and set his
teeth together as he did when anything happened which
he greatly disliked. He glanced at Moy and repeated
what had just been said.
"Of course!" Moy said impatiently, "obviously we
need the police, and at once. It's like a ship with plague
on board. You must get the officials in before the
passengers can get off. We're in quarantine until the
regulations are complied with."


70 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
thought was blank and which by some horrible mis-
take was loaded. And which killed Ingram."
Again she looked him straight in the face with that
unreadable stare of hers.
"What a good shot he must be!" was her quite un-
expected comment.
Moy almost jumped. "Look here, if you say a thing
like that, you render yourself open to a libel action."
He spoke severely.
"But why? If he thought he was firing blank?" She
met his scrutiny with bland nonchalance. "I think he
and Mr. Ingram practised revolver shooting a good
deal," she went on.
"I don't know," he muttered.
"The first time I met Mr. Gilmour he said something
about it." She was standing in the window now playing
with the tassel of the curtain.
"Where did you first meet him?" he asked and, on
that, he had the satisfaction of seeing a look cross her
face that said quite plainly that she wished the words
unsaid. Then her gaze returned to the street. She saw
a small man walking briskly along the opposite pave-
ment. In his coat was an enormous yellow buttonhole.
"Oh, down in the country," she replied, as she began
to walk towards the stairs and descend them with an air
of doing so almost mechanically. The front door was
out of sight of where Moy was standing. With cautious
care she opened the door. It was not bolted, she saw.
Instantly the man with the yellow buttonhole came in.
He dropped the decoration into his pocket as he did so.
"Thank heaven it was early. The only yellow flowers
I could find were some paper daffodils from my diggings


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 71
and two men already have asked me if I was doing it
for a bet. Now, Miss Longstaff, will you give me your
news, please. My name is Courtfield. Here's my card."
He was studying her as he spoke with a pair of eyes
that took her in from head to heel. Everything for his
paper would depend on this young woman's trust-
worthiness. Could she be relied on? That was the para-
mount question. But behind it was another that
interested the crime expert almost as much. Why had
she volunteered to give the information in the first
place? Was it vengeance for the dead, or against the
living? He had met Ingram, and he had met Gilmour.
He knew of the friendship between the two men. Why
did this girl believe, or pretend to believe, that the
latter had killed the other? Civil Servants are not, as a
rule, a bloodthirsty lot. Gilmour had seemed quite the
average pleasant-tempered chap one meets at every
turn. Ingram had not shown any irritating peculiarities
. . . then why had this young woman 'phoned as she
had done? Meeting that stare of her black eyes he felt
a personality here, a will of steel . . . Was it merely
because of the offer of a permanent post on the paper
that she had come forward or was there some other
sharper spur? The presence in the house of the lovely
Miss Pratt, did that stand for anything?
But Miss Longstaff was now speaking to him. She led
him into a small room rarely used by any of the present
household. It was chiefly given over to some defunct
owner's butterfly collection, and there she said a few
swift sentences to which Courtfield listened as though
they were directions concerning the finding of hidden
treasure. Then he slipped out again. He did not want


72 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
to meet the police. No paper would care deliberately to
flout them, and he would be at once asked how he got
into the house, and what he intended to print. His
name, for once, would not appear below his article. It
was to be strictly anonymous and to remain so.
Upstairs Moy paced the corridor back and forth,
that strange look on Alfreda's mobile face haunted him.
And the look that she had fastened on Gilmour's bowed
head as she came into the room where Haliburton stood
telephoning. A suggestion of a future triumph, of a
"you wait!" vindictiveness about it . . . What was
she going to do? For Moy felt sure that she meant to
take some active hand in matters ... or could it be
that she had already taken it, and was now waiting for
the harvest to appear? He believed that she was glad of
the awful position in which Gilmour stood . . . But
surely no one could even pretend that this was any-
thing but a genuine accident? Or a terrible blunder.
Though Gilmour was an unusually careful and neat-
fingered young man. Was it possible that this was a
crime on Gilmour's part? But Moy, putting aside all
preconceived idea as to Gilmour's character, could not
see the likelihood of that. The two lived together. If
Gilmour, for some as yet absolutely hidden reason,
wished to murder Ingram, he could have done so in a
dozen better ways without ruining his own life. For no
matter how sympathetic the jury or the coroner might
be—supposing him, or them, to be in a kindly mood—
the fact remained that Gilmour's whole life was ruined.
He could never forget, and the world would never for-
get, that he had killed Ingram. There was only one
chance for Gilmour that Moy could see, and that was


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 73
that, supposing a crime to be here and not an accident,
Gilmour could discover its author. But even if he suc-
ceeded in doing this, or even if the police succeeded,
could it be proved? Say that someone who hated Gil-
mour, had secretly substituted a loaded cartridge for
the first blank one, the deed was done. Could the past
give up its secrets in anything so difficult to prove, so
swiftly accomplished? Moy did not see how Gilmour
could ever be set free from suspicion, or rather from
the pillory of being a marked man all his life unless the
crime could be brought home to the real criminal—if a
crime, and a criminal, existed behind this death of
Ingram. Assuming it not to be due to accident, the
murderer, Moy reasoned, must be someone with a mo-
tive for killing Ingram, and also someone who knew
where the revolver and the cartridges of Gilmour were
kept. Suddenly his face blanched a little. He saw that
he must go further—much—than this, and he realized
that if a crime lay here, then the criminal must have
overheard or been told of, that talk only this evening
in the lounge, when Gilmour had warned the company
that if anyone tried to frighten him by playing a ghost
he would fire at it. A sound came from behind him. It
was the butler, looking quite gay in pajamas of rain-
bow hue and a green dressing-gown.
"Is anything wrong, sir?" he asked, looking about
him and quickly taking in all that there was to be seen.
Hobbs had served in the War and his gaze dwelt on the
white mound farther down the passage.
"It's Mr. Ingram," Moy said. "I rang for you for
nearly five minutes on end."
"We sleep on the top floor now, sir, and the bells


74 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
don't reach us. But I heard doors closing, and came
along to reconnoiter, and nearly ran into Mr. Tark who
was coming to wake us up. . . . He told me what had
happened. I've told the housekeeper to let the others
know. Have the police been notified, sir?"
As he asked the question, came the sound of a car
drawing up with a swish, and a quiet press of the elec-
tric bell. Quiet and yet insistent.
Hobbs ran down, and Moy bent over the landing
balustrade. He did not intend to leave the corridor to
itself again. Through the big front door slipped a short,
stout man, a doctor, Moy rightly guessed. Then came
a figure that filled it well. Chief Inspector Pointer was
a tall, soldierly-looking man with a tanned, pleasant
face and a pair of very steady, tranquil, dark gray
eyes, the gray of the thinker, without any blue in them.
He was followed in his turn by three other men.
"It's Mr. Moy, sir," the butler said as he looked up
at the young solicitor.
Moy thought that such an introduction was open to
misconstruction seeing what had just happened, but he
only leaned over and asked if they would all come up to
him as he did not want to leave the corridor.
"The body is here," he added.
The chief inspector said a word to the butler, who
remained behind with one of his men, then he took the
stairs three at a time, noiselessly as a cat.
Moy introduced himself. "I represent the dead man,
Mr. Ingram's relatives, as well as the owner of the
house. Both are—were, in the case of Ingram—clients
of mine." He stared hard at the young man facing him.
Much would depend on the officer in charge of this case.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 75
From Gilmour's point of view one could almost say that
everything would depend on the inquiry being conducted
with absolute open-mindedness and fairness. Let him
fall into the hands of a stupid man and he might find
himself in a position which Moy did not care to con-
template. The longer Moy looked into the face of the
chief inspector, the more reassured he grew. Here, he
felt, were better brains than his own, brains of no com-
mon order, and there was, besides, that indefinable
something that makes a man stand out above his fellows
as a leader, as an organizer.
Chief Inspector Pointer, too, was giving the young
man in front of him a far more searching scrutiny than
his apparently casual glance would have suggested. He,
too, liked what he saw. Moy was tremendously upset,
and not at his best, but the shrewd pbserver facing him
knew that he was not trying to be at his best. Here was
a young man frankly rattled, not in the least endeavor-
ing to pull himself together, not seeking to make any
definite, arranged impression. Also Moy's face was his
fortune all his life long, little though he guessed it. For
something warm, and impulsive, and unselfish, looked
out of his ugly features and spoke in his voice.
"Just what has happened?" Pointer asked, as Moy
led him and the doctor to the white heap at the farther
end.
Moy explained very briefly what he himself had seen
and heard, and what he had been told by Gilmour.
"Who drew the sheet out from under the body?"
Pointer asked as, after giving it a look, he lifted it off
and began to fold it up. So his one glance had told him
that the sheet's position had been altered. Moy, on that


76 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
instant, realized a little of the quick perceptions behind
the chief inspector's quiet, steady, gaze.
"One of the ladies. She thought his face should be
covered," he said slowly. Time enough to name Miss
Longstaff later on.
Pointer and.the doctor now bent over the stiff form.
"Bullet still inside the head," the doctor said. "Well,
there's nothing further for me to do here." He had an
urgent call to an ambulance case. In a few words he
and Pointer arranged for the fetching of the body and
for the post-mortem. The doctor hurried off. Pointer
turned to Moy again.
"How do you know this is the same sheet as the one
which you saw draped about him. Were you here when
it was drawn out from underneath?"
Moy had not been, but he identified it by the bullet
hole close to the hem. Pointer asked him to initial in
pencil one of the corners and then locked it away in his
case. He had Moy show him where he was standing
when he first caught sight of Ingram and Gilmour.
Where Gilmour's room was, where Ingram's.
Then Pointer went over the floor of the passage inch
by inch. He picked up from a cream-colored flower in
the carpet a piece of what looked to Moy like a torn
scrap of cream wrapping paper roughly the size of
his hand, and near it a spent cartridge case. He sniffed
at the latter. When he had made quite sure that there
was nothing else to be found on the ground, he ex-
amined the walls and the few articles of furniture stand-
ing against them. Last of all, he stopped for a moment
at one blind, whose cord was tied into a sort of bunched
knot.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 77
"I saw that done," Moy explained, "one of the girls
staying in the house did it absent-mindedly, while talk-
ing to me only a few minutes ago."
"Then the blind was up?"
Moy, for a second, did not see how this simple fact
was so patent. Then he nodded. "Yes, she pulled it up
while talking."
"And pulled it down again?" Pointer asked.
Moy nodded.
"Did she open the window?"
"Yes, it was for that reason that she had drawn up
the blind," Moy said. "Then after a moment's gulp of
fresh air, she closed it, drew down the blind, and went
off."
Pointer looked out of each of the others in turn and
saw that this window was the only one in the corridor
that showed the opposite pavement. The view from the
other windows was blocked by a ledge above the first
floor.
"Was it the same young lady who drew the sheet out
from under the body?" he asked when leaving the win-
dow as he found it.
Moy assented, saying that he supposed the signs of
hauling on the sheet had made the chief inspector guess
what had been done.
This time it was Pointer who nodded and then asked
if the position of the body had been much altered. Moy
said that as far as one could judge by looking at it, the
body lay exactly where it had been before and in the
same attitude.
Pointer next asked where Gilmour was, as he would
now like to hear his account of what had happened.


78 THE TAIX HOUSE MYSTERY
"I suppose he still has the weapon with which he
claims that he fired the shot?"
Moy said no, that he himself now had it, and could
vouch for its being the identical weapon. He handed it
over. Pointer looked at the little nickel-plated thing,
examined it carefully, smelled it, broke it open and
counted the cartridges still in it—all of which were
blank—and put it, too, away in his attache case after
requesting Moy to make quite sure that he could iden-
tify it again in court.
"Now who exactly are the people in the house?" was
the next question. "And where is the host or hostess?"
Moy explained briefly, but sufficiently, what the posi-
tion was. Then Pointer, leaving one of his men to watch
the body unostentatiously, followed Moy to Gilmour's
room at the end of the corridor where Winnie Pratt
hurried up to him. She had been lurking on the landing
above, apparently.
"You're the police, aren't you? Or from Scotland
Yard?"
Moy introduced the chief inspector.
"Oh, please don't arrest him! Please don't believe
it was anything but a dreadful accident!" she begged in
tragic accents. "Why, Mr. Ingram was his great
friend! Besides—Mr. Gilmour's engaged to someone
else."
Pointer said nothing. She was very cryptic. Was this
really just a silly girl defending a man in peril? There
is no more charming sight if sincere than that reversal
of the usual roles between the sexes, but it must be
sincere.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 79
He asked her why she thought that he would look on
the death as anything else but an accident.
She wrung her exquisitely kept hands with their
tangerine-enameled nails.
"Because the police always do doubt things. And
suspect people! But in this case that's absurd. It's not
in Mr. Gilmour's nature to do such a dreadful thing!"
Pointer asked her a few questions about herself,
about Gilmour, about Ingram. But she would hardly
give an answer to any set question.
"Mr. Ingram wanted to marry me, you'll hear all
about that side of the story, and I—I—well, I wasn't
sure . . . and I liked Mr. Gilmour—just as a friend.
And I showed that I did. And . . . well . . . some
people will say, so my mother says, that it was all my
fault. That I oughtn't to've talked so much with Mr.
Gilmour . . . but that's such nonsense. He's in love
with Alfreda Longstaff. And besides, it was only friend-
ship—ever. And besides, even if it hadn't been, he
wouldn't have shot Mr. Ingram. It's a ridiculous and
horrible idea."
Again Mrs. Pratt appeared looking for Winnie. Moy
did not wonder. Really, what the girl needed this
morning was an attendant from a Home for the Feeble-
minded, he thought savagely. Of course it was all Mrs.
Pratt's fault, trying to make Winnie see the error of
her past ways and overdoing it. But what a perfect
simpleton the girl was . . . though a dream of loveli-
ness. . . .
Pointer looked after the dream with a thoughtful
frown.


SEVEN
Moy took Pointer into the room where Gilmour sat
with his head hidden in his hands. He looked up with a
start as the two came in. Moy, after a word of intro-
duction, would have left them alone together, but Gil-
mour asked him to stay.
"My memory seems to've gone spotty. You may be
able to prompt me."
An assenting glance from the chief inspector said
that the young solicitor's presence would be quite wel-
come, then he turned to Gilmour and asked for an
account of what had happened.
Gilmour said that he was awakened by someone open-
ing his bedroom door with a snap and giving a hollow
moan or groan. As he sat up in bed, the door was left
open, the corridor outside was flooded with moonlight,
and he saw a sheeted figure walking down it away from
his room. He stepped to a chest of drawers by the door
and took out his revolver which he had loaded with
blank for just such an occasion. In answer to another
question he said that owing to some talk about ghosts
in the evening, he had rather thought that someone
80


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 81
might play that old joke on him. He had never thought
of Charles Ingram, but of Moy, or possibly Frederick.
Taking his revolver, he went into the passage, where the
ghost was now half-way down. At his call of "I'm
going to shoot, you'd better disappear!" the "ghost"
turned round and faced him with another moan. He
fired full at it, and, to his horror, heard it give a cry,
and then sag to the floor. After that awful second Gil-
mour said he could not be sure of what happened. He
tried for a switch on the wall but could not seem to find
one. The next thing he remembered clearly was lifting
the head of the ghost and finding that it was Ingram,
and that he was quite dead.
Pointer then began his questions. Gilmour said that
he was a good shot, but that on this occasion he had not
troubled to take aim, though it was possible that, as
the head would be thrown into relief against the oak
paneled door, it would have offered a target at which
he had fired without consciously selecting it.
Pointer asked for a very careful account of the
ghost's appearance. Gilmour, looking very white, shut
his eyes, and described minutely a figure draped in a
sheet, with the end drawn over the head and covering
the whole face to below the chin, walking with head
thrust forward and a shuffling gait.
Moy noticed that Pointer took Gilmour over this
part very carefully, harking back and repeating sev-
eral of his questions, though in different forms.
Next he produced the revolver just handed him by
the solicitor. Gilmour identified it as his, and again
went over how he had loaded it, where the box of blank
cartridges were in the drawer, and where the loaded


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 83
empty-handed. Unfortunately he was wrong," Gilmour
added.
Pointer asked next on what footing he and the dead
man had been. Gilmour said very simply that he and
Ingram had always got on well, and that no subject of
discord had ever come between them.
"Has he any close relations?" Pointer asked next,
turning to Moy, so as to give Gilmour a little time to
recover. He looked as though he needed it.
Moy said that Ingram had a sister married to a man
called Appleton, and a half-brother, Frederick Ingram.
Mrs. Appleton had two children and she and they were,
according to Ingram's will left with Moy's firm,
Ingram's sole legatees. As to how much he had to leave,
Moy said that he had no exact idea. But he fancied
that the dead man's income was around five hundred
pounds a year. Gilmour, appealed to for corroboration,
said that figure would be fairly accurate, though,
as Ingram lived at the rate of four hundred, there
were possibly some savings to be divided up. Ingram,
Pointer was told, as he knew already from Who's Who,
had taken high honors in mathematics at Cambridge,
where he also held a Fellowship for a few years, only
relinquishing it to become examiner and lecturer in his
especial field. He wrote on many other subjects as well,
though they were all more or less kindred ones, such as
ciphers and odd numerical puzzles.
Pointer now asked something which was exceedingly
painful to both men. He wanted Moy and he wanted
Gilmour again to go over the incidents of the shooting.
That is to say, Gilmour was to act as far as possible
as he said that he had when he was first awakened, and


84 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Moy to do as nearly as possible what he said that he
had done when he heard the shot, the cry, the thud.
It was an ordeal for both, but they each of them bore
out what they had said as to their different stations at
the different times of the tragedy.
Pointer thanked them and went on by himself into
Ingram's room. It was the bedroom of a very orderly
man. The only untidy thing in the room was the bed,
which showed that the sheet had been hauled off with-
out any regard as to what other bedclothes were
dragged on the carpet with it. Rather oddly so, Pointer
thought, considering that the man who was supposed
to have dragged it off would be supposed to want to
sleep in that same bed again. But it had been the top
sheet, so, though the foot of the bed was undone, the
bolster and pillow end were apparently untouched.
Slipping his careful hands under the bolster, Pointer
found some shreds of tobacco; Player's Navy Cut. Yet
Ingram's waistcoat hung over the back of a chair by
the armholes, and he had no pipe in the room. Exam-
ining the waistcoat, Pointer found some shreds of
tobacco in the pocket where the tobacco pouch was
kept. He also found a very unusual long inner pocket
on the left hand side running down nearly to the bot-
tom and closed at the top by a zip fastener. It came
well below the top of the waistcoat so that it would not
show, whether open or closed. Pointer examined it very
carefully. There was nothing in it now. The size was
four inches wide by nine long. It would hold quite a
long envelope. He put the waistcoat away in his attache
case. The dust of that peculiar pocket might tell what
it usually held. Ingram's other pockets held a hand-


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 85
kerchief, a fountain pen, a book of stamps and a small
pencil stub. A letter case with letters of no importance,
a key ring with keys on it fastened by a chain, and
some money—under three pounds.
He rang for the butler. Since there was no sign of
any books or writing materials in the room, the chief
inspector rightly guessed that Ingram used some other
room in the house as well. But first Pointer wanted to
see the footman who usually woke Mr. Ingram and
probably valeted him. Pointer had learned from Moy
that the staff consisted of two men and four women.
Windover, a fresh-faced young countryman, was sum-
moned by the butler. He waked Mr. Ingram at half-past
seven every morning, he said, took away his shoes and
anything that needed brushing, and turned on his bath.
Where did Mr. Ingram usually keep his waistcoat?
Pointer asked next. Windover fancied that it was under
Mr. Ingram's pillow or bolster, as it was never in sight
of a morning. In the evenings, Mr. Ingram would often
leave it out. Now Pointer had noticed just such another
pocket down the back of Ingram's only pair of evening
trousers. He asked the two men whether either of them
had ever seen Mr. Ingram use it, or the inner one in his
waistcoat. Neither had. Nor had the footman ever
found anything in those particular pockets when he
brushed either article of clothing. Windover, however,
closely questioned, seemed to be concealing nothing and
really to have nothing more to tell, so Pointer followed
the butler to the ground floor and into the library,
which he was told was given over to Mr. Ingram's sole
use. Mr. Ingram had last been seen by Hobbs sitting
writing at the bureau in the window when he brought


86 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
him in, as usual, a decanter of whisky and a siphon.
Mr. Ingram was a very moderate drinker, the butler
added, generally asking for a small bottle of beer in
preference to anything stronger but occasionally, as
last night, whisky would be brought him. Mr. Ingram
had told him to take it away again and had seemed
unwilling to be disturbed by even the briefest of ques-
tions as to what he would prefer instead.
"He had that small clock over there down beside
him on the writing-table, sir, and motioned me when I
came in not to come closer," Hobbs went on. "Stopped
me just by the door, and told me he wouldn't want the
whisky."
Was it usual for Mr. Ingram not to let him come up
to him? Pointer asked. The man said it was Ingram's
invariable rule.
Questioned further, the butler could only say that
Mr. Ingram had no visitors last night as far as he
knew, but in a household of five young men who brought
their friends in with them at all hours, it was impossible
for him to be sure on this point. As to Mr. Ingram
himself, the butler evidently had liked him immensely.
The same seemed to be true of all of the five tem-
porary owners of the house except of Tark. Of him the
butler could only say that he had a nasty silent way,
which the maids much resented, of showing when he did
not like things. However, bar that trifle, he had never
served easier gentlemen than the five. Yes, they all
seemed to get on very pleasantly together. Mr. Ingram
and Mr. Gilmour too? Oh, certainly. The butler was
quite sure that up till last night, at any rate, there was
no slightest hint of ill-feeling between them.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 87
The butler seemed to have been squeezed dry and
Pointer let him go, and began to go over the room inch
by inch. Three pipes lay neatly on the mantel, pipes
that had smoked Navy Cut recently. The top part of
the writing bureau yielded nothing of interest. Ingram
apparently did not use the blotter except as an under-
lay for his hand. On a copy of yesterday's late evening
paper was a candlestick with some drops of sealing wax
on it. The wax itself lay on another corner. So some-
thing had been sealed since that paper came into the
house. In the bottom drawer of the bureau was a locked
attache case. The lock was a most peculiar one. Un-
pickable, Pointer fancied. Unlocking it with one of the
keys on Ingram's bunch, he found it chiefly filled with
books neatly strapped together and three piles of manu-
scripts. The first was on Baphomet of the Templars.
The second consisted of the first seven chapters of a
book on The Law of Rationality of Indices. The third
was the first volume, finished apparently, of a work on
cryptography. It dealt exclusively with ciphers. Ingram
seemed to be just finishing an exposition of Dr. Blair's
clever three dot system with sidelights on an adaptation
of the A.B.C. system in use during the war. He stood
awhile looking down at the pages. They seemed to have
been proof-read by some other hand, a sprawling, rather
smudged hand. Apparently the bundle was just about
to be sent off to the publishers. . . . He examined the
books. They were works on ciphers, such as that of
Andrew Langie Katscher, there was one on Lord
Bacon's famous two-letter cipher, a copy of Bacon's
De Augmentis . . . and many others, mostly on the
same subject, or on some mathematical point. He also


90 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
her, chief inspector. It would be so easy, even for you,
to get quite a mistaken idea of how things are. Ingram,
poor chap, was in love with her, so is Haliburton, but as
for Gilmour, as Miss Pratt said, he's all but engaged
to another girl who is also staying here, a girl called
Alfreda Longstaff. Just at present she's angry at the
idea of getting into the newspapers, and, of course,
Gilmour will be in the spot-light for a while. That can't
be helped. But though Miss Pratt is evidently kinder-
hearted than discreet, I can assure you that all of
Gilmour's heart and attentions were devoted to his own
girl."
Pointer said that he had got that, and then asked
how the household now at The Tall House had got itself
together. By which, he explained that he meant who had
proposed the plan in the first place.
"Frederick Ingram," Moy said promptly. "Because
he knew his brother Charles wanted to please Miss
Pratt who had said she'd like immensely to stop in a
really fine old London house for a few weeks, not just
for a few days."
"And Frederick Ingram is by profession?" Pointer
asked.
Moy hesitated for the fraction of a second. But
there was no use trying to make Frederick out a man
of substance held in high esteem in the best clubs.
He acknowledged that he was a bookmaker's partner
for a season. By original profession he was an archi-
tect who did very badly and tried to turn his hand to
many things since he left Oxford. His mother died when
he was a lad and left him originally a much larger


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 91
fortune than eventually came to his elder half-brother
from their father.
"Where did he live?"
"All over the place," Moy said. He went on to ex-
plain that most of the time Frederick lived with his
half-sister, Mrs. Appleton, or had lived with the Apple-
tons, paying his share of their little house in Markham
Square, but that he, Moy, understood him to say that
he had left there some months ago and taken rooms in
Hampstead. Since Charles had come to The Tall House
for five weeks, Moy believed that Frederick had gone
back to Markham Square in order to be nearer his
brother.
Markham Square, Pointer reflected, was off Fulham
Road. Anyone living there and wanting to take a bus
to The Tall House would use just such a ticket as he
had found. As for Appleton, Pointer learned that
Edward Appleton had once been a well-known actor,
that Miss Ingram had married him—he was a distant
connection of the Ingrams—just before he came into
quite a little fortune, on which he had left the stage
and appeared to have gone the pace a bit. Certainly
very little of the fortune seemed to be left. There were
two children of the marriage. Appleton had been rais-
ing, or trying to raise, money lately on his life insur-
ance, Ingram had learned, but that was securely tied up.
"Look here, chief inspector," Moy broke out, "you
don't think there's anything wrong about this shooting,
do you? Some of your questions seem to me a bit wide
sweeping."
"In case it should turn out different from what you
think, it's always just as well to have all preliminary


92 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
questions over and cleared up," Pointer said evasively.
"And now, I'd like to see Miss Longstaff."
Moy looked worried. "She's not herself at all this
morning," he repeated and left it at that.
Pointer rather expected to see a case of wrecked
nerves, but the girl who came in almost immediately
did not look as though she knew the meaning of the
word. She explained at once that, though she had come
to the house as Mr. Gilmour's guest, there was no
question of any closer relationship growing up between
them.
"Mr. Moy told me that it would prejudice you
against Mr. Gilmour to be told that," she wound up.
"I don't see why." She fixed that baffling stare of hers
on the chief inspector.
He had a feeling that he was seeing her in some
moment of triumph, and yet her face struck him as
fierce and starved and repressed all at once. Three
dangerous ingredients to mix together. As far as words
went, she was very controlled. Of course she did not
disbelieve Mr. Gilmour's account of what had hap-
pened, she said, it was corroborated by Mr. Moy, but
she had no intention whatever of marrying the man to
whom such a misfortune had happened.
"Once unlucky, always unlucky, I think," she said
with a curious little smile. "I really couldn't marry
an unlucky man."
"Am I to understand that you and Mr. Gilmour
were engaged then, until the death of Mr. Ingram this
morning?" Pointer asked stolidly.
"Not at all," she replied at once. "We weren't en-
gaged at all. He asked me to stay here for a fortnight,


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
93
while Mrs. Pratt would be here, and I don't deny that
the idea on his part was—that after my visit, I might
perhaps agree to marry him. I think Miss Pratt's stay
in the house here suggested the scheme to him. The
agreement was that I should have a little time in which
to make up my mind. It's quite made up now."
"When did you first meet Mr. Gilmour?" Pointer
asked. And she explained, a trifle hastily, that they
had met at her father's rectory. Questioned as to what
she herself had heard of the tragedy, she said that she
was awakened by a shot and a cry, and rushed down-
stairs as soon as she had collected her startled wits.
Pointer was rather surprised that she, or any woman,
would have known that it was a shot that she had
heard, for Gilmour's automatic would make but a com-
paratively small pop, not anything like as loud in the
front of the house on an upper story as a car back-
firing, and her bedroom was at the other end of a side
wing.
"Why did you draw the sheet out from around and
under Mr. Ingram?" Pointer asked next in his most
official voice. »
Miss Longstaff shot him an odd look from those im-
penetrable eyes of hers.
"Oh, just the natural impulse to cover up a dead
body," she said, still eyeing him with that blank but
by no means meaningless stare of hers. Had she picked
anything up in the corridor, he asked her next. She said
that she had looked at the automatic before handing it
to Moy. She had seen no spent cartridge case.
Pointer asked her to describe exactly how the sheet
had been wrapped about the body, and the position of


94. THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
the body itself. Her account tallied with Moy's but was
much more detailed. She had a most unusually accurate
eye for details, Pointer saw. He left the question of the
sheet and asked her about the dead man, but she seemed
to have no knowledge of him except from her stay here
at The Tall House, and nothing helpful to say about
him. Yet he was certain that something was stirring in
her connected with the death. If so, she refused to let
him catch hold of it. Whenever he thought that he was
getting close, she would dive from sight with it down
into deep water again. Finally he thanked her, and,
with an ironic little acknowledgment of his thanks, she
left him.
A dangerous young woman to a detective just now,
he thought, for she was keen on some purpose of her
own, and quite capable, he believed, of putting a false
clue down, or taking a real one away, as suited her own
plans. She was mentally agile too, for Pointer had been
clever with his questions. Both by nature and by train-
ing he knew how to ask the one slight query which,
added to one previous little question, would make a
quite unexpectedly complete answer.
He stood staring down at his shoe-tips after she had
gone, rocking himself backwards and forwards deep in
thought. Was she in the crime itself, if a crime had been
committed here? Even Pointer could not yet say, but if
this was a crime, it might very possibly be one into
which malice entered, and certainly Alfreda Longstaff
could not be set on one side in that case.


EIGHT
Pointer saw Mrs. Pratt next. She struck him as a
woman of great force of character. Also of unusual
energy. She seemed to have some difficulty in knowing,
or at least in saying, just what she did think of the
dreadful event. Pointer got the impression that, pro-
vided her daughter took it sensibly, it would rank as a
wise decree of Providence, though very sad and dread-
fully pathetic, of course. But if her daughter lost her
head still further, then Mrs. Pratt would look on
Ingram's death as an act of God ranking with plague,
pestilence and earthquakes. She struck Pointer as being
more on edge, tenser, than he would have expected.
Where her daughter was concerned he could understand
it, but that would only be connected with Gilmour, one
would think, whereas she seemed, to the astute and
penetrating brain studying her, to be most in tension
where Ingram was concerned. More than that he could
not gather from his brief talk. Mrs. Pratt was an ex-
perienced wielder of shields, and turned his cleverest
points aside with nimbleness. She had hardly left him
when the door was opened and in darted the lovely girl
95


96 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
he had seen before, but now in something jade green
and white which made her look more like an exquisite
flower than ever. She was still all exclamations, all
protests.
"Oh, he's not guilty! He never did it! He never
meant it!"
"Who says he's guilty?" he asked quietly. She
checked herself and stared at him.
"Why, my mother says that everyone says—I
thought he acknowledges that he shot Mr. Ingram"
"By accident, yes," he finished.
"And of course it was an accident," she protested
again, with that air of defying the world to say it was
not, that seemed so utterly uncalled for. She made a
bad impression. It might be but the result of some
nerve-storm, but she certainly protested too much. Was
it love defending, or its opposite suggesting? She fled
out again as swiftly as she had entered. Pointer looked
after her. If her looks covered a criminal, there was
nothing in them to suggest a pioneer, a high flyer.
Pointer would expect always to find Winnie Pratt on
the beaten path whether that path were the right one
or the wrong one.
Tark came next. His face would have arrested any
detective's interest at once, it was so intentionally im-
penetrable, his eyes so studiously blank, his mouth
suggested so rigid a curb. He gave his answers as
briefly as possible. He was a mining engineer by pro-
fession, he said, but he had been at a loose end for some
years, owing to the closing down of some mines in
Russia. He was born in Beausoleil, aged thirty-seven,
the son of the Curator of the Duke of Monaco's Deep


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 97
Sea Museum. He remained docketed in Pointer's mind
as the man with the coldest eyes and the tightest lips
that he had met for some time. It was a very deter-
mined face, nevertheless, with its hint of utter callous-
ness to human emotions. It was the face of a man of
no nerves, who would hardly know the meaning of the
word fear. He claimed to know nothing of the dead man
and never even to have seen him until his visit here,
except for a chance meeting at Haliburton's flat.
Haliburton came next. He explained about himself
and Tark with his usual air of quiet frankness. Tark
was at The Tall House simply and solely as his friend,
he said. Like Tark, Haliburton seemed to take it for
granted that Ingram's death was, as Gilmour said, the
result of a terrible accident. A taxi drew up as he was
talking. Pointer had expected the dead man's sister or
brother-in-law before this. He knew that Moy had
notified them of the accident as soon as the police had
been telephoned for.
Now he saw a neatly-dressed woman get out and
glance up at the house with dark eyes full of horror.
It was Mrs. Appleton. Pointer went to the door to meet
her. She came in with a look of almost unbearable
anxiety, and hardly listened to the chief inspector's
brief introduction of himself and his few words of
grave sympathy.
"How did it happen?" she asked breathlessly.
He told her.
A look of relief swept over her face. "I see," she
said, drawing a deep breath. "Poor Charles! Poor
Charles!"


98 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Moy came down the stairs murmuring in his turn
some expressions of sincere sympathy.
"Were you there—when it happened?" she asked,
catching at some word of his that seemed to bear that
meaning.
"I was."
"Do you mind telling me again just how it hap-
pened?" she asked, and resting her hands on a little
occasional table in the hall beside her, she listened very
intently. When he had done she asked:
"Where is Mr. Gilmour? I want to see him."
Moy was afraid of a scene. Something in the woman's
face suggested nerves that had been, if they were not
now, strung up very tensely. He temporized.
"He feels it terribly—naturally. He's not fit to be
questioned much and give coherent replies, I'm afraid,
Mrs. Appleton."
"Of course I want to hear what he has to say! You
didn't really see how it happened! Of course I must
know! Charles was my only brother."
She did not seem to rank Frederick as even half a
brother. On her face the look of terrified anxiety that
had been there when she hurried into The Tall House
was returning in part.
"Shall I ask him to come down here?" Moy turned
to Pointer, who nodded. While they were alone he did
not speak to Mrs. Appleton, who stood staring down
at the table as though some map were spread out on
it, and she were trying to find her way by it.
When Gilmour came in, he stood for a moment in the
doorway, an expression in his brown eyes that was at
once dumbly pleading and heartbroken.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
99
Mrs. Appleton came to what seemed like natural life
for the first time since Pointer had seen her. She took
Gilmour's hand very warmly.
"Poor Mr. Gilmour! How terrible for you! But
please tell me exactly what happened. Forgive my ask-
ing you to speak of it so soon, but I must know. I
must!” For a second her voice shook, and Pointer saw
her bite her lip hard.
Gilmour drew a deep breath. "I fired what I thought
was a blank shot full at him, Mrs. Appleton,” he began
brokenly, “and—and I killed him. There was some
mistake. The cartridge was loaded—not blank.”
“But what was he doing?” she asked, as though
groping in a mist.
He explained about the dressing up as a ghost.
“Charles ?” she said in a tone of utter bewilderment.
“Dress up and play a joke of that kind !"
He repeated the explanation that he had given the
chief inspector, and a little of her amazed look passed
off. “Yes, that's quite a possible reason ..." she
murmured. “Testing a theory ...? Poor Mr. Gil-
mour!” she repeated gently, and her face looked as
though some terrible weight had slipped from shoulders
that could hardly bear it. “Thank you for telling me
everything. There are still lots of questions that I want
to ask. Naturally. But I don't think there's anything
more I must know immediately.” She held out her
hand, and Gilmour, taking it, thanked her with a twisted
sickly smile for her kindness and walked up the stairs
as though he could hardly lift his feet.
Mrs. Appleton turned to Moy.
“Can I see him? Is he-is he-much disfigured?”


100 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Moy told her that the body was not in the house.
He explained about the necessity for an autopsy. "And
there's another little matter," he went on. "Have you
any objection to my opening your brother's will? It's
still in my possession. It leaves everything to you, as
you know. Do you mind if I let the chief inspector here
see it at once?"
"The chief inspector? Oh, I took you for someone
staying in the house—for a friend of my brother's." A
taut line showed for an instant around Mrs. Appleton's
well-cut, decisive mouth. Pointer saw that she could
be quite formidable on occasions, and also that she had
not heard one word of his own self-introduction.
"Of course the police have to look into it, Airs.
Appleton," Moy said soothingly, "and with a man of
your brother's position, since it is within the Metro-
politan area, the Yard takes charge of the investiga-
tion. Just as a precaution."
"Fortunately my brother's death is so evidently due
only to a terrible accident," she said, and immediately
looked as though she wished the words unsaid. Pointer
took her to be a very truthful and not particularly dip-
lomatic woman. The relief in her voice was the most
interesting part of her remark.
"I'd like to sit a while and pull myself together," she
said now. "The room my brother used as a study is on
this floor, isn't it?" She turned to Moy who, after an
assenting glance from the chief inspector, opened the
door of the study and closed it after her.
"Well, really," he said in a low tone, coming back to
the chief inspector, "if I didn't know Mrs. Appleton, I
should fancy she was trying to get points as to how to


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
101
shoot a person by mistake. She seemed positively insati-
able—couldn't seem to have the account of how it
happened told her often enough."
Pointer waited for three minutes by the clock while
Moy talked on, then: ,
"I want another word with her," he said in an equally
low tone, and walking lightly across the hall's thick
runner, he opened the door of the library and stepped
in. Moy followed.
Mrs. Appleton was leaning far out of the window.
She turned her head over her shoulder and with no sign
of emotion, drew back into the room.
"I was smelling the heliotrope in the window boxes,"
she said. "I love flowers. Well, I feel better now. I
think I'll go home. My husband wanted to come, but
as he had a most important engagement, I wouldn't let
him put it off. The children will be wondering what has
become of me. How they will miss their uncle!" With
a little bow, she went on out and they heard the front
door close behind her before Moy could get to it.
"She was very attached to Ingram, I know," Moy
said. "She's a domestic sort of person anyway. De-
voted to her home and her family, whether brother, or
husband and children."
"Devoted to flowers, too," Pointer murmured dryly,
and Moy looked at him inquiringly.
Pointer had decided to take the young solicitor into
his confidence to a certain extent. As far as Moy could
help him, that was to say. Even if guilty, there were
certain facts which the criminal could not now alter.
Supposing there was a crime here, and even supposing
Moy was connected with it, which Pointer did not sup-


102 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
pose, knowledge of how the inquiry progresses is often
of no use whatever to the criminal, who cannot change
the past nor alter the traces left by it.
"I wonder if she thinks cigarette ash helps flowers to
grow," Pointer indicated a Majolica saucer which he
had last seen full of cigarette ash. "I have quite a lot
of the ash that was there done up in an envelope. The
rest is now on the window-box. She's shifted that blot-
ting pad, too. But the paper basket hasn't been
touched . .
"Those books, too." Moy followed the other's keen
eyes. "Yes, they've been shifted. Every one of them.
Ingram always kept the line forward, so that the backs
projected over the shelves. They're all back now
against the wall behind them."
They had been pushed back when Pointer had seen
them before. It only confirmed his belief that the room
had been searched before he got to The Tall House.
But he had a test of his own as to whether Mrs. Apple-
ton had also gone through them.
"I put slips of paper in at page twenty in six of these
books, beginning with the first and taking every tenth
on this row. I wonder if they're still there."
Two of the slips were in the paper basket. The others
had either not yet been touched, he thought, or had been
put back at random.
What was she looking for? Both men speculated.
A later will cutting her out? But some of the books
were too short to take a sheet of paper the length of
the usual will. Whatever she had been looking for, again
in her case, it seemed to be something which she felt
sure would not be in the paper basket; it was odd—


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 103
taken in conjunction with her manner of seeming re-
lieved—immensely—by the account of how her brother
had been killed.
Pointer believed Ingram might have sent some letter
or parcel off by late registered post from the sealing-
wax and candle on the late evening paper. But he had
not yet found any registration slip. Was this what was
being hunted for? And hunted for by several people?
Pointer next interviewed the servants. He learned
that the front door had been left unbolted last night.
The butler never bolted it, but the last in of the five
usually saw to it, though it had been forgotten once
before—by Mr. Haliburton, who had assured the butler
that he would be more careful in future. The fact,
therefore, did not amount to much, for supposing there
were a crime here, a murderer with any sense, if a
member of the household, would have taken the
elementary precaution of undoing the door so as to
suggest an outsider. But there was also the fact that
Ingram had sat on working in the library last night
after the others had gone to bed.
It would have been quite easy for him to have stepped
out, and drawn the bolts back and admitted anyone.
Did his sister think, or know, that he had, and was that
why she had tipped the cigarette ash out into the win-
dow box so that it could not be identified?
Apart from the fact of the door being found unbolted
this morning, there was one other interesting piece of
information that came to the chief inspector. The
second housemaid told him that last night, while cross-
ing the landing, she saw Mr. Ingram and Mrs. Pratt
meet, on their way out to the car with the others for


104 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
a dinner to which all were going. Mrs. Pratt had said
something very low and very quickly to Ingram as
thought not wanting to be overheard. But the maid's
sharp ears had caught the final sentence. "Please be
sure and burn it." Mr. Ingram had nodded and said
what looked like words of reassurance and agreement.
He looked very grave and very disturbed, the house-
maid thought. Where exactly had this meeting taken
place? Just outside Miss Longstaff's door, the maid
said. Miss Longstaff was still in her room, she thought,
but she could not be sure. As for the bus ticket, the
housemaids had found similar ones several times before
and all during this last week. And always in the morn-
ing, when there had been no known visitor to account
for it in the evening. The butler added one more time
during the day when a similar ticket had been left on
a wine tray after Mr. Frederick Ingram had been in.
Pointer asked for another word with Mrs. Pratt when
he had finished with the servants.
"What exactly did you ask Mr. Ingram last night
to burn?" He put the question without any preamble,
as soon as he had closed the door behind himself.
"I beg your pardon?" she asked as though hard of
hearing. Pointer repeated his question.
"Oh, a ridiculous doggerel I had written about some
theory of his, to do with circles and squaring them,"
she explained lightly. "It really was such silly stuff
that I didn't want it lying around and read by every-
one who might think that I fancied such rhyme
poetry!" She smiled pleasantly at Pointer.
"When had you written it?" he asked, as though
chatting.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 105
"A few days ago," was the airy reply. Mrs. Pratt
evidently did not intend to be pinned down to hours.
"By the way, have you seen Mrs. Appleton this morn-
ing?" Pointer asked next.
She opened her eyes. "Who's Mrs. Appleton, pray?"
"Mr. Ingram's sister. I had an idea "Pointer's
tone expressed surprise that the two did not know each
other, but either Mrs. Pratt was a splendid actress or
she really had not even heard the name before, and
thanking her, Pointer opened the door for her.
Those burned papers in the library fireplace, were
they the result of this talk? Was it for them that some-
one had searched the room this morning before the
police arrived and was it for them that Mrs. Appleton
was looking? It was because of the similarity in the
double search that Pointer had asked Mrs. Pratt
whether she knew the sister of the dead man.
There was a ring at the front door. Pointer went on
out. A short, rather round-shouldered, slender, young
man was stepping in with the air of one of the family.
Moy hurried past with outstretched hand. This was no
moment to stay on personal likes or dislikes. After a
few words of horror and regret he turned and intro-
duced the chief inspector to Frederick Ingram. Had he
been a horse, or a dog, the chief inspector would not
have bought him. Frederick Ingram had a treacherous
eye.
Frederick listened now with an appearance of deep
grief to Moy's account of how his brother had met his
end. Then he moved towards the library.
"As his literary executor, I take possession of all his


106 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
papers, of course. I think I'll have them removed en
bloc to my rooms at Hampstead."
"All of them?" Pointer asked.
"Well, perhaps I needn't burden myself with all,"
Frederick said promptly, with the air of a man con-
ferring a favor. "I'll make a selection." He walked on
into the room. Pointer and Moy followed.
"The work I was correcting of his was locked in a
case in the bottom drawer. If you'll hand me over his
keys I'll take it along for one thing—and his letter case
and so on . . . I'd better have those too . . ." He
spoke carelessly, but his small eyes darted round the
room in a very searching look as he bent over the
pigeon-holes. For a second he ran through their con-
tents then he turned. "The keys?" he said pleasantly.
"They're at the Yard," Pointer said as pleasantly
and as carelessly. "Just for the moment, of course.
They and the attache case."
Frederick's smile turned into a mere show of teeth.
But he said nothing.
"You were here last night," Pointer went on, remem-
bering the bus ticket. "Did Mr. Ingram seem just as
usual?"
Frederick Ingram said nothing for a moment, merely
went on turning over some papers in his hand.
"Just," he said, laying them down and turning
round. He had pleasant manners as a rule. The trouble
with Frederick was that when they were not pleasant
they were so very much the other way.
Now if ever a loosely hung mouth spoke of garrulity,
this young man's did, but not even Tark's tight lips


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
107
could have answered the chief inspector's question more
briefly. There was a short silence.
"I take it that my brother's papers—and keys—will
be handed to me as soon as all the usual formalities have
been complied with?" he asked the chief inspector, who
said that he should have them back as soon as possible.
"I think I ought to go through them to see if there's
anything missing. Among his papers, that is . .
Frederick went on.
Pointer said that if Mr. Ingram would use his, the
chief inspector's car, he would be taken to Scotland
Yard and shown all the papers belonging to Mr.
Ingram.
"I can soon tell you if anything is missing," Fred-
erick promised.
"Do, and we'll send them, as soon as we've done with
them, to Markham Square." Pointer seemed to be finish-
ing the interview on a note of meeting the other's wishes
as far as possible.
"Oh—eh—Hampstead, please. I only stopped with
my sister while running in and out of here, as I had to
do several times a week. After this terrible tragedy, I
shall go back to my own digs."
"But Mrs. Appleton is her brother's chief legatee,
and also an executrix. I think it might be as well if
you and she worked through them together with Mr.
Moy," Pointer persisted.
"But surely I'm his literary executor," spluttered
Frederick, turning indignantly to Moy who shook his
head.
"He's left a bequest to the Author's Society and asks
the secretary to appoint a regular literary agent to act


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 109
unfolded and shaken out, every envelope searched, he
had locked the case again and laid the keys on top of it.
Then he sat a moment smoking a cigarette with what
looked like a frown of concentration on his face.
He took quite a brisk walk along the embankment
until he made his way by tube to Chelsea, and to Mark-
ham Square. Here, in a little two-story house that
looked on to one of the melancholy cats' gardens of
town, he rang a bell. The outside of the house might
be dingy, but inside everything glittered, and it was a
very efficient-looking elderly woman who greeted him
with a smile of acquaintance.
"Mr. Appleton's in, Mr. Fred. He's been 'phoning
you, so I think he expects you."
He walked on past her into a neat but cold room.
"Please excuse there being no fire. It's gone out and
I haven't had time to lay it again yet. We're upset with
Mr. Ingram's dreadful death. Dreadful to think of! His
own friend to've done it! And him being all dressed-up
as a ghost makes it seem worse, somehow." She was
shedding her prim "official" manner as she spoke. Fred
stared at her for a second as though he wondered im-
patiently of what she was talking, his narrow little
head, the head of a man who would always prefer to
gain his ends by scheming, rather than by force, a little
aslant, as he murmured some brief acknowledgment. The
next moment the door was swung open with a certain
deliberate regal air and there stood Appleton. And he
stood a full minute framed in the cream painted door-
way staring at his brother-in-law with his head thrown
back, an eyeglass fixed in one rather wrinkled eye,


110 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
before, with an effect of some spiritual meaning in the
physical act, he took a step into the room and, still
staring at Fred, closed the door behind him without
shifting his steady gaze.


NINE
Pointer had got from Moy—to that young man's be-
wildered curiosity—the name of the painters and deco-
rators who had last done up The Tall House. At the
shop in question, he produced the piece of torn paper
which he had picked up from the carpet where Ingram's
dead body had lain. The cream-colored scrap was a
torn fragment of wall paper printed in tones of dun,
blue and heliotrope. It had lain in the passage with
its reverse side uppermost.
The firm stocked no such papers, he was told. The
foreman, who had worked at The Tall House, could
further assure the chief inspector that nowhere there
—not in any cupboard, nor on any wall, had paper
been hung. All throughout was paint, or distemper,
or paneling; and had been so for the last twenty years.
The scrap shown him was, he thought, about ten
years old. Very cheap in quality, and put on with
cheap paste. It must have dried away from its wall—
some chimney breast he would suggest, and have been
loose some considerable time. A couple of months
wouldn't be too long. As to its makers, he could only
111


112
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
shake his head. A cheap old pattern that would not
be found anywhere in stock today. Of that he felt sure.
The two detective officers went on to the Yard to-
gether, and there Pointer decked his subordinate in a
sheet which was the exact duplicate of the one which,
with a hole shot through it, he had at the moment in
his locked attache case. The hole on this, the experi-
mental one, was marked with red ink.
The chief inspector worked hard draping the linen on
the mystified Watts now in this way, now in that. He
had him lie down, he had him sit up, he had him walk
about, or stand at ease. Finally he took the sheet off
and handed it to the other.
"Suppose you try it by yourself. You're about
Ingram's height. How would you put that sheet around
yourself if you wanted to dress up as a ghost. Remem-
ber Gilmour says that it more or less covered the body
and came down over the head to below the chin."
Watts flung it around himself in a quick swirl, and
drew one end over his face, hanging loose at the lower
edge. Pointer nodded.
"Just so. That's how I've been trying to do it. Now
don't duck, this is the fatal shot!" and he flung some-
thing light and sticky at the other. Watts could feel it
strike fair and square in the center of his forehead.
"Do I give a screech here and topple over, sir?" he
asked. He could not see the other's face, only the floor
in front of his feet.
Pointer's hand raised the loose end.
"No good. You've done no better than I. The point
is this: I want you to see if your ingenuity can devise
some way of wearing that thing that will bring it fairly


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 113
round your body, over your head and over your face
below your chin, and yet let a shot which hits you bang
in the forehead make a hole only four inches in from
the edge. Personally I don't, and didn't, think it could
be done. But have another try. Or you might drape it
on me."
"Might as well drape it on the Cenotaph, sir." For
Pointer was well over six feet, though he did not look
his height. "But this really is a teaser! I don't often
feel as certain that a chap is telling the truth as I do
with Gilmour ... let me have another go at it this
way . . ." and again and again Watts turned himself
into a mannequin and pulled and twisted while Pointer
flung the fatal shot of dyed putty. All to no good, the
putty would not mark within a foot of the red outlined
shot hole.
"I didn't think of that at the time," Watts said
finally, "but it can't be done, that's plain."
It had been plain to Pointer from the first, and he
believed that it had been plain to Miss Longstaff too.
Or so he read her manner when he had spoken to her
about the sheet.
"You see, sir," he said a little later to the assistant
commissioner when finishing his account of what he had
found at The Tall House, "the trouble is that the body
was left in the passage for five or ten minutes with no
one watching it. Mr. Gilmour, Mr. Haliburton and Mr.
Moy were all concerned with telephoning for a doctor
or the police. The result is that the sheet found lying
on the body when I arrived may not be the original
sheet worn by Mr. Ingram as a 'ghost' at all."
"What makes you doubt it?" Major Pelham asked.


114 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
1
"The hole doesn't fit his story, sir." Pointer went
into details. "What it fits is an idea that Mr. Ingram
was shot in his bed, lying down with the sheet drawn up
to just cover his face. The hole fits that perfectly,
given the marks of the tuck-in at the end, and Ingram's
height." <
"No scorch marks on it?" Pelham was interested.
"If he was shot in his bed, we may possibly find that
a piece of asbestos was put over the linen sheet. There
is some in the housemaid's pantry, used for an ironing
stand. But it's a very small revolver, sir. Even without
any asbestos there would have been very little scorch- I
ing if anyone had fired from even the foot of the bed."
"You think Gilmour's lying, then?"
"He speaks and looks like an honest young fellow,
but his story doesn't fit the hole. It may not be the
same sheet. Someone may have purposely substituted
one that won't hang together with his explanation. It
would have been a simple matter to burn a hole of the
right size in another sheet, and then change them. It
could even have been done in the time that the door
of Ingram's room was shut with Ingram's body lying
just outside. In fact, if any substitution has taken place
it was probably done then."
"And the sheet Ingram really wore?"
"May have been disposed of in some way. Packed
with articles of clothing. We have no power to search
for it, of course. Or handed to someone outside the
house. The one person known to have laid a sheet over
Ingram, the sheet in my attache case, is also the same
person who stood watching from the one window that


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 115
shows the opposite pavement." He explained about the
blind and Miss Longstaff.
"She knew about that hole, of that I've no doubt,"
Pointer went on, "though whether merely from sharp
powers of observation or not, I can't say."
"She's the girl Gilmour is in love with, isn't she?"
Pelham glanced at the notes.
"She is, sir. But she's by no means the girl who's
in love with Mr. Gilmour," Pointer said dryly and again
explained about Miss Pratt.
"Odd," Pelham thought, "now if the girls were re-
versed one could understand some act of revenge . . .
that sort of thing . . . but apparently that doesn't
fit."
"Apparently not, sir," Pointer agreed.
"And what about the cartridge being loaded when
he thought it was blank, what about that?"
"Anyone could have substituted a live cartridge, sir.
Mr. Gilmour placed the automatic, after loading it, in
an unlocked bureau drawer in his bedroom late yester-
day evening, before he went on to a theater with the
ladies of the house party."
"How about alibis? Anything possible in that line?"
There was not. Everyone in the house claimed to
have been in his own bedroom and in bed long before
the time that they were all disturbed by Gilmour's
shot and the subsequent cry. The whereabouts of the
trio of the dead man's sister, half-brother and brother-
in-law was not yet established.
"Has all the look of a pretty nasty little plot," Pel-
ham murmured with a grimace, "and perhaps directed
as much against Gilmour as against Ingram. Unless it's


116 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
really entirely aimed at Gilmour, and the author of it
didn't care a hang who was fired at with that first shot,
so long as it would place Gilmour in the dock on a
charge of murder. He's in an appalling position—if
innocent. And he certainly could have hit on some
quieter, simpler, method of making away with Ingram
than in this public way. He and Ingram were climbing
in the Peak country only last month, I've learned."
"Plenty of openings there for an enterprising young
man," Pointer agreed with a smile—he himself was a
fine rock climber.
"Anything to make you suspect a crime besides the
hole in the sheet which is too near the hem?" Pelham
asked after a little pause.
"Several curious odds and ends, sir."
Pointer explained that the dead man's bureau had
quite evidently—to Pointer—been searched, though not
the paper basket. That it looked as though Mr. Ingram
had sent off a sealed letter or package, unless it had
been taken. Finally Pointer came to the specks of pipe
tobacco under Ingram's bolster, though his pouch and
pipe were in the ground floor library.
"And that means?" Pelham started a fresh cigar.
"It looks as though the someone who had searched,
or stolen from, the waistcoat, did not know of his habit
of placing it under his pillow. Or rather, didn't know
that we would at once learn of it, and so had hung the
waistcoat over the back of a chair to prevent us from
guessing that it had held anything of importance."
Pointer went on to speak of the curious long inner
pocket in it, and in the dead man's evening trousers.
"Couldn't Ingram have placed it under his pillow the


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 117
night before with whatever he sent off last night, by
post or by hand . . . the something he sealed, you
think? Isn't it possible the maid was slovenly, and didn't
make the bed properly?"
"The housekeeper told me the sheets in the house
were only changed once a week, but yesterday was the
day for changing them, and the sheets themselves bore
out her words. They were quite fresh from the laundry."
"Ingram would hardly have undressed and gone to
bed, placing his waistcoat in security, and then decided
—for some reason, some spasm of distrust or fear—to
send off what was in the pocket, have got up, removed
the waistcoat, taken out the contents, disposed of it—
or them—and then gone back to bed hanging his
waistcoat on his chair now that it was no longer of
importance?" Pelham asked.
Pointer had thought of this, but it seemed to him,
as he said, that for Ingram to have again got up and
played the ghost—supposing Gilmour to be telling the
truth—seemed rather erratic behavior on the part of a
young man of very quiet, very routine habits. If Gil-
mour was not telling the truth, and Ingram had not
played the ghost, still this idea meant that Ingram
had gone to bed, then got up again and dealt with the
mysterious valuable thing in his possession, and then
returned to bed and had time to fall soundly asleep
before he was shot. All that left rather too little time,
Pointer thought. Unless something else suggested it,
he thought it simpler to assume that someone else,
rather than Ingram, had hung that waistcoat on the
chair. He went on next to speak of the scraps of paper
beneath the moveable oak curb. "I handed the lot to


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 121
took place. Secondly, that he is telling the truth, but
that the cartridge was changed, and so was the sheet
through which the shot went which he fired and which
killed Ingram; the changed sheet to look like the orig-
inal one, and yet to have been faked so as to throw
doubt on his story, by the position of the hole. That it,
in a nutshell?"
In a cocoanut shell, Pointer thought, but he only said
that it was.
Pelham watched him with the absent-minded gaze of
one whose thoughts are elsewhere.
"I said just now that this might be a crime aimed at
Gilmour and the exact victim be almost immaterial to
the author, but it's also possible, isn't it, that he was
used as a convenient way of getting rid of Ingram with-
out its being suspected that a crime was being com-
mitted."
Pointer agreed that this explanation was possible.
"There's one thing, sir. If it's been aimed at Mr.
Gilmour our attention will be called to the hole in that
sheet. So far, no one has tried to make me think it any-
thing but an accident. Personally I'm wondering if the
newspapers will give the suggestion . . . Miss Long-
staff may be in touch with a reporter . . ."
"You seem to think anything's possible with her,"
chaffed the A. C.
"Pretty well, sir," Pointer agreed as he left the room.
Within half an hour the chief inspector knew that his
guess was right, and that it was to be by way of the
papers that doubt was to be cast on Gilmour's account
of what had happened. Or rather by way of the Morn-
ing Wire. Its front pages were black with capitals and


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 123
Ingram wasn't shot by you at all, but that in some
devilishly clever way you were just made to think you
did it?"
Gilmour stared at him. Then'he shook his head.
"Impossible! I fired. I heard him scream. I heard
him fall. I turned up the switch—at last—to see him
lying dead with my bullet hole in his forehead. Ingram,
who never hurt anyone in all his quiet life!" His voice
shook. There was something bewildered in his face since
he had read the paper. He took a turn up and down
the room.
"This article!" he went on passionately. "Someone's
not content with what I shall suffer all my life. Some-
one wants me to be publicly branded as what I'm not,
and that's a murderer. Should the worst come, as it
may, after that article, will you act as my solicitor?"
Moy held out his hand and gave the other's a warm
clasp.
"Depend on me. But it won't come to that—prob-
ably." The last word was brought out reluctantly.
"Though there's no use denying that the situation is
serious. Something's going on . . . something under-
hand . . . but there's one thing for you—the lack of
all motive. But about this article in the paper," Moy
was thinking hard, "who on earth could have written
it?"
"Some reporter, of course, or some press agent got
it all from the police." Gilmour did not show much in-
terest in the authorship. Whereas Moy was keenly
interested. He did not believe that the chief inspector
would have been so guarded just now if he had meant
to speak to the press. But supposing someone wanted
f


124 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
to harm Gilmour, that piece of print had given him
a terrible chance. He pulled himself together.
"The inquest is this afternoon. We must be pre-
pared, of course. Fully prepared. Now suppose I go
through the questions the coroner's sure to ask you.
Among them will be when did you meet Ingram, how
did you come to share a flat with him, and so on."
Gilmour answered truthfully but baldly. His answers
told nothing new. His best defense, as Moy had just
said, was lack of motive and plenty of better oppor-
tunities, as the solicitor had not said, but contented
himself with thinking. He looked again at the printed
diagram of the sheet and the hole.
"Whoever did that is trying to fasten a murder on
you," he agreed.
Gilmour looked at him a long minute.
"There's only one person here who hates me," he
said Anally.
"Frederick Ingram?" Moy asked promptly. He had
thought of him at once.
Gilmour looked surprised. "Fred? Bless me, no! He
wouldn't have the grit to hate any one. Besides, all
that old story is forgotten between us. We're quite good
friends now. No, I mean Miss Pratt."
Moy almost gasped. Gilmour smiled a trifle crook-
edly.
"You've wondered at my standing out against the
fair Winnie. Apart from being in love, deeply and truly
in love, with another girl, her display of interest in me
strikes me as so—so," he seemed to be groping for
words, "so artificial. I can't express it in words, but
she doesn't care a hang for me really, Moy. Whatever


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
125
the reason for her apparent preference for me, it was
only apparent. Miles away from the real thing."
Moy stared at him. He was certain that Gilmour was
mistaken. He felt sure that he himself had got Winnie
Pratt well taped, all her measurements taken, and they
were those of a silly young woman who had hitherto
always had what she wanted presented to her on a silver
salver, and so from sheer mischief had decided to ask
for the moon. Now, had Gilmour said that Miss Long-
staff didn't care a hang for him, Moy would have quite
agreed with him. Suddenly Gilmour leaned forward.
He had decided to say more, go further than he had
intended to a minute ago.
"You said just now there was no motive that could
be drummed up against me. I'm not so sure. Ingram
was madly in love with Winnie. It might be twisted to
look as though I, too, had been, and had shot him to get
him out of the way."
"Come, come!" Moy could scotch this idea at once.
"We all know to the contrary, and could show that you
avoided her whenever and wherever you could. Besides,
she herself "He stopped. It would be a very un-
pleasant avowal for Winnie Pratt to be asked to make.
"Just so!" Gilmour said meaningly. There were
tense lines about his young mouth. "What about Winnie
that my manner was only a pose."
Moy was genuinely worried. "But I say! Good
Heavens ! Why should she?"
Gilmour did not reply.
"You mean, that you think she will?" Moy asked in
Pratt herself! Supposing


126 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
horror, for if Miss Pratt did any such thing Gilmour
might indeed be in a tight place.
Gilmour was silent quite a long minute, fingering the
newspaper. Then he said with a sigh:
"Being in danger alters one's point of view. I should
have said yesterday that nothing would make me give
a girl away, but after that article there," he flicked at
the front page, "this may be a hanging matter. You've
said you'll act for me, so, well, I wouldn't bank on her
not taking that line."
Remembering whom he had seen adjusting the all-
important sheet over Ingram's body, Moy felt sure that
Gilmour was exactly reversing the feelings of the two
girls, and that time would yet show that Winnie really
loved him, whereas it was Miss Longstaff who, for some
reason of her own, had chosen to pretend, very casually
and carelessly, that in time she might be willing to
marry him.
"She's got at Alfreda in some way," Gilmour went
on, lowering his voice. "Alfreda wasn't like that down
at Bispham. I know as well as I know my own name
that the other has made her think there have been
tender passages between us, and that it's only because
of my not wanting to stand in Ingram's way that I
wouldn't openly join her train of worshipers."
A short silence fell. Moy was re-reading bits of the
article before them. Then he turned a quick, excited
face to the other's hopeless one.
"Look here, I begin to wonder if the sheet was
changed. While we were in here. If so . . . where could
the real one have been put . . . any place near by?"
He was talking to himself, and stepped out into the


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 127
corridor as he spoke. Suddenly he pounced on a door
close to Ingram's room. "That's the linen cupboard!
It's just possible! I wonder! You wait here. It's better
that I should look by myself!" Moy was almost inco-
herent, but Gilmour waited quietly enough. Two minutes
later Moy reappeared. "Andy! Andy! Puss, puss!" he
called, and in answer to his voice along stalked a black
Persian which had adopted Moy as his particular
friend. After another two minutes or so Moy came out
again. His eyes were alight, but he said nothing until
he had drawn Gilmour into a room and shut the door.
"Got it! The sheet is there! The real one, for it's got
the hole in the right place!" he said in an exultant whis-
per. "Oh, no, I didn't take it away. I had a brain-wave
instead. I got hold of the cat, took off his collar with
its bell, teased a corner of the sheet through the hamper
where it had been tossed with other soiled linen, worked
the cat's bell into the bit that hung out. The basket
stands in a corner, the bell doesn't show, but should
anyone try to get hold of that sheet, it'll ring. Now,
stay here, and keep your ears open for a tinkle-tinkle,
while I go and tell the policeman on the landing all
about it."
He was gone, and for the first time since he had fired
the shot Gilmour's face showed a slight relaxation of
its lines.
The detective listened carefully to Moy while the cat
sat by and washed a paw.
"You've found another sheet? Also with a bullet
hole through it?" He looked keenly at the young
solicitor. "I see. And you've fastened a bell "He
stopped. Tinkle-tinkle-tink! came a light, clear sound.


128 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Andy, the cat, listened with a bewildered look upon
his intelligent face. Surely that was his bell ... he
scampered down the passage straight for the linen room
and only just dodged out of the way as someone slipped
out of the door. The someone was Miss Longstaff.
Behind her came Frederick Ingram. "The maids seem
quite demoralized," she said promptly, "I've been ring-
ing for hours for a towel for Mr. Ingram. Do you know
where they're kept?" She had nerve, Moy thought, as
he replied stiffly that he had no idea where the linen
at The Tall House was stowed, but that a pile of hand-
towels was usually to be found in the locker of the
downstairs lavatory.
"Were you ringing for her in there?" he asked
blandly, "it sounded for all the world like a cat's bell."
Miss Longstaff murmured a word that did not sound
like any bell, and went on downstairs with Fred. The
detective sat on the basket which Moy had pointed out
to him, from which a little round bell still dangled,
fastened into a corner of a sheet.
"I wasn't present when you found this?" the detec-
tive, a young Oxford man, said with a faint grin, eyeing
Moy very closely.
"You weren't present either when Ingram was shot,"
Moy countered. "Yet you don't deny that fact."
"Oh, no, it's no use denying facts!" the young man
gave another grin.
"Why this attitude then?" Moy held out his cigarette
case.
"Because this hamper and the two others were
searched when we arrived this morning. You don't sup-
pose Chief Inspector Pointer overlooks any mouse-hole,


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 129
do you? No sheet with a bullet hole was in this room
then.
Moy stared at him. "I found it at the very bot-
tom . . ." he said slowly.
Bosanquet shook his head. "Not there this morning.
However, that's between ourselves. At any rate, this has
got the hole in the right place." He was spreading out
the sheet and looking at the little round scorched hole
which was a good foot and a half in from the edge.
Moy initialed it carefully with an indelible pencil.
Then they put it back in the basket and the detective
announced his intention of sitting on guard on the
hamper until the chief inspector could see it.


TEN
Frederick Ingram touched Moy on the arm.
"Look here, that was just Miss Longstaff's idea—
that towel excuse—the fact is, I think as my brother's
representative, he was your client, that you oughtn't to
take sides with Gilmour, as you do."
"Take sides?" Moy repeated, ruffled. "I don't under-
stand. What do you mean? I'm in the house when a
terrible accident happens ; I see it happen—practically.
Naturally, I form my own conclusions. Who's more able
to than the man on the spot? I do believe Gilmour's
story. Why shouldn't I?"
"Because Charles was your client," Fred said slowly
and weightily. "Gilmour shot to kill, Moy. You should
consider that view of my brother's death and see if it
leads you to—Gilmour's side."
"It's just as well there are no witnesses," Moy said
to that. "You must have some reason for your words."
"Oh, it's so obvious," Fred Ingram said loftily, "so
obvious that you're all overlooking it. Of course my
sister, Mrs. Appleton, swears that it's an accident, but
then"—a very nasty sneer crossed his face—"what's
130


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 131
easier? Shoot a man openly, and then claim you thought
you were shooting blank . . . Perfectly safe to get
away with that."
"And the motive?"
Frederick hunched his shoulders. "Some private feud,
of course. They shared a flat together. A dozen motives
may have arisen of which no outsider would know any-
thing."
"The chief inspector is coming over at once," Moy
said after a moment's thought. "Why don't you speak
to him of your suspicions?"
"I'm going to," was the reply, and Fred swung on
down the passage.
Pointer was on his way to The Tall House when the
message from his man was received for him at the Yard.
He heard the news with his usual impassive gravity.
Then he went up and inspected the place where the
second sheet had been found. The detective who had
taken charge of it had already made his inquiries. The
room was naturally never locked, the sheets had all been
changed yesterday morning in readiness for the laun-
dry which would call for them some time during the
afternoon.
"We looked them all over, sir," Bosanquet mur-
mured. "Wasn't here then. But unfortunately all the
sheets in the house are exactly alike, except those used
by the servants."
"So we shan't know off whose bed it came," Pointer
finished.
Up till now it had not been possible to examine any
bedrooms, let alone beds, except those of the dead man
and of Gilmour. Pointer went there now. The sheet was


132 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
still missing from Ingram's bed. It was quite impossible
to say which of the two claimants to be the original top
one was genuine. Even the housekeeper could not tell
any of the linen apart.
"Quite useless trying to find out," Pointer said to his
man. "Evidently it was in, or on, a bed when we first
came early this morning." He examined the hole. If not
caused by such a shot as would come from Gilmour's
little automatic, then it had been burned with the
pointed end of something of a size so exactly right, that
whoever did it must have known exactly what size was
wanted, even though the other sheet had been taken
away by Pointer.
A tap came on the door. Fred Ingram would like to
speak to the chief inspector when he should be at
liberty, said one of the plain-clothes men.
Pointer had finished here. He took the second sheet
and laid it away in the despatch case which always
accompanied him while an inquiry was on. Pointer saw
Frederick in one of the downstairs rooms. Frederick
informed him that he felt sure that Gilmour had in-
tended to kill Ingram. That all this "stuff" about think-
ing it was loaded with blank was "tosh." Of course the
cartridges now in it are, but the first one was a genuine
affair, and known to be by Gilmour.
"And what did your half-brother own, Mr. Ingram,
that would make Mr. Gilmour—or anyone else for that
matter—want to murder him?" was the query, and the
gray eyes just swept the other's by no means ingenuous
face.
Frederick clenched his teeth together until his cheek
muscles bunched. "That's a very police way of looking


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 133
at things," he sneered. "His purse or a five pound note,
you mean? I don't know what the motive is, but I can
guess." He shot his rather underhung jaw forward.
"When there's a lovely girl staying in the house with
two men keen on marrying her, it wouldn't be difficult
to add a third."
"But Mr. Gilmour claims to care for another lady."
"Oh, that! Have you seen them both?" Frederick
demanded rudely. "Well, where are your eyes, chief
inspector? They'll tell you how much truth there could
be in that tale. But whether she was the reason or not,
the fact is all that matters here. And the fact is that
Gilmour has very simply, but quite successfully, drawn
the wool over all your eyes. All except Miss Longstaff's.
Look here, if Gilmour were innocent wouldn't she be
the first to feel it? She doesn't. She's so sure he's guilty
that she's having nothing more to do with him."
"Well," Pointer said with carefully obvious patience,
"as I understand it, Mr. Ingram, you have only sus-
picions, nothing definite, to go on? No past quarrels,
for instance, overheard by you?"
"Nothing but my common sense," Fred said shortly.
"And what about your own little disagreement with
Gilmour?" Pointer asked pleasantly. His shot at a
venture went home. Fred's face flushed.
"That has nothing whatever to do with my certainty
that the man's lying, and is gulling you all." And with
that he left the room rather hurriedly.
Pointer was entering a note or two when Moy came in
search of him.
"Has Frederick Ingram spoken to you yet?" he
asked.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 135
between the lines as well as what was in them. Ingram
was the sort of fine chap who never would dream that
anything could exist between lines."
"Yet I thought he was rather an authority on
ciphers," Pointer said.
Haliburton said that he too had heard as much, but
he seemed to feel no interest in that subject and referred
back to the silver fox farm without telling anything
fresh.
"Did Mr. Frederick Ingram ever threaten to make it
unpleasant for Gilmour?" Pointer asked.
Haliburton drew in his rather long upper lip. He
shot the detective officer a speculative look.
"He did. Told him he'd teach him to mind his own
business. But I don't think Fred Ingram the sort of
chap who would keep his word—even to himself—if it
were at all troublesome."
"What terms were he and his brother on?"
"Excellent. As far as any one could judge Charles
and Frederick were united by a really strong family
tie."
Pointer drove on to the Yard turning Frederick
Ingram over in his mind. Where lay the key to the
motive for this murder—if it had been one?
He informed the assistant commissioner of the dis-
covery of a sheet, whose hole would fit Gilmour's state-
ment, tucked away where it would have been sent to the
wash with the other sheets and where the hole, even if
noticed, would have been taken for a burn from a
cigarette end.
"And it may be just that—or something hot—which
did it," he wound up. "Mr. Gilmour even might have


136 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
recollected its position before the paper came out, and
tried to put a blunder on his part right before it should
be too late. He could have done that, of course, and just
waited for someone to make the discovery."
"Yes, like his story, it's inconclusive," Pelham
agreed. "Can't you clinch the matter by the sheets
themselves? Or do they all match each other?"
He was told that they did.
"And again it was Miss Longstaff who is connected
with this sheet as with the other. Amusing notion of the
cat's bell. And you say Fred Ingram was with her?
Odd ..."
Pointer went on to speak of the fox farming idea and
Gilmour's part in preventing Ingram dropping quite a
nice little sum over it.
"Aha!" Pelham cocked an ear like a hunter who
hears a crackling out in the bushes. "So Frederick
Ingram told you he suspected Gilmour of murder, did
he?" The assistant commissioner passed a paper over
to Pointer. "Here are the brief outlines of Fred
Ingram's career, as far as we know them," he said.
"Not at all the sort of saint who wouldn't try to do his
half-brother out of a few shekels. Trouble with him
seems to be that he once made a really good win at
Cannes, baccarat it was, that most fascinating of
naughty little games, and since then he flutters around
any casino candle like the proverbial moth, and to very
similar effect. However, this last couple of years, as
Haliburton says, he seems to be a reformed character.
Though he still knows some shady people ... I won-
der if it was he who sold the story of the sheet to the
paper, and not Miss Longstaff . . . somehow she


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 137
really seems so incomprehensible ... if she did it, I
mean. Gilmour apparently so in love with her while she
sells him to the press . . ."
"Yet it is Miss Pratt, sir, who by her words throws
the greatest suspicion on Gilmour, the suspicion of a
possible motive. As far as I can learn there is no
foundation whatever for her idea that Gilmour cares
for her. But she seems to think he does. Must."
"Perhaps more may come out at the inquest. What's
your position going to be at it?"
"Knowing nothing, suspecting nothing, and believ-
ing everything," Pointer assured his chief, and the other
let him go with a smile.
Back in his own room, Pointer looked through the
Yard's news-sheet of crimes that had happened last
night. It was part of every officer's routine. There was
one item on it at which he stopped, an attempted rob-
bery of a small post office off Leicester Square. That
office had happened to have rather a large sum of
money in its safe last night, a fact that seemed to have
leaked out; but not so the other fact that the authori-
ties had taken precautions accordingly.
A masked man had entered the office only to find
himself confronted by a group of resolute postal officials
—all armed. He had decamped on the spot. He had
rushed down a side street, and it was this fact that in-
terested the chief inspector. For, supposing Ingram to
have posted a letter late last night, then he would have
done so from either the Leicester Square or the Fleet
Street post office, as being the two nearest to him which*
were open all night. And coming from Chelsea, there
was a short cut from Piccadilly Circus by way of Lisle


138 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Street which was the identical street used by the masked
man in runing away. Lisle Street had just been freshly
laid down, and on a pair of shoes, neatly placed under
the foot of Ingram's bed, were the marks of having
recently been walked over some newly tarred road sur-
face. Pointer already had sent a man to that office ask-
ing whether Ingram-to be identified by his portrait in
the paper which had printed the diagram of the sheet
with the hole in the wrong place—had registered a
letter or parcel there last night. A message on the
'phone while he was still studying the map, told him
that a clerk on late duty had recognized Mr. Ingram
as the sender of a late fee letter or package by letter
post, some time shortly after one o'clock last night.
There had been some question of making exact change
and Ingram had offered a half-crown which was bad.
He had handed in another, and had stood chatting
about his first piece and how to identify such a one in
future. Unfortunately the clerk could not remember the
name to which he had posted the package or letter, and
knew that by no effort could he do so, but he was cer-
tain of Ingram's identity, and his description of the
rather hesitant, pleasant voice tallied exactly with the
dead man's, who, the post office clerk said, had been
alone. He had glanced at the clock at the same moment
that Ingram had pulled out his watch and compared the
two, and he was willing to swear that the hour was
shortly after midnight. Five or six minutes past twelve.
Now that was just a little before the time that the
masked man would be running down Lisle Street, which
would probably be otherwise quite deserted at that
hour.


140 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
this running man of yours and recognize him? . . .
I've been rather inclined to the idea that he had some
important document, cipher or cipher-reading, which
was wanted by the murderer. But a false half-crown
. . . and a man desperately trying to escape detec-
tion . . ." Pointer's voice died away into thought.
Franklin was greatly interested. "Of course, suppos-
ing my man was known to Ingram, he might have told
him some cock and bull story about always running at
night in full evening rig so as to slim, but he would know
that when Ingram got the morning papers with their
account of the attempted robbery in them, his tale
would be torn. I think you've struck a good line there,
Pointer."
Pointer did .not look delighted. "It's a pleasant mix-
ture," he said. "As a rule, in a shooting case, if a man
wasn't on the scene of the crime, then he's presumably
innocent. But here, the members of the house party
who were out of the house last night will be the most
suspected, and heaven only knows where anybody was.
I've only their word for it. . . . No way of checking
it. . . ."
"Well, if your murder is the result of my raid,"
Franklin said, quite unconscious of anything humorous
in the phrasing of his sentence, "then it looks to me as
though a bigger and better raid was being planned. You
think he was someone staying in the house?"
"Whoever murdered Ingram was either stopping at
The Tall House, or knew the house well." Pointer ex-
plained about the sheet and the blank cartridge and
Franklin agreed that that seemed certain. Pointer ran
over the people in the house to him, describing them.


142 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
sible, which was what made life, and especially the life
of a detective, interesting, but that it seemed a strange
idea. Not borne out by anything yet found.
"It's much more in Fred Ingram's line, one would
say, but even with him "he proceeded to pass on
his information about the younger Ingram.
"Do you want this robbery of yours mentioned at the
inquest?" Pointer asked. He was folding up the Yard
News.
Franklin emphatically did not. And said so. He
watched the other mark some papers and tie them to-
gether.
"What do you call this case—The Tall House puz-
zle?" he asked.
"Personally I think of it as the 'Either-Or' case,"
Pointer replied. v
"Either Gilmour is telling the truth, and is innocent,
or he's lying and is the murderer." Franklin laughed a
little. "Nothing peculiar about that I should say. This
suggestion as to a possible motive in my robbery for
Ingram's death seems rather to suggest that he's telling
the truth."
Pointer nodded in his turn. "But here again, taking
Ingram's death as a murder, either the motive was to
escape detection when Ingram read the morning papers
or it is something quite different. And I don't see what
part the posting of the package or letter would play in
the plot if Ingram was merely killed to avoid recogni-
tion, or to prevent his handing over someone to the
police next morning."
"And why should the posting of the letter play any


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 143
part in the crime?" Franklin paused in the act of light-
ing a cigar to ask.
"Well, the murderer knew about the ghost talk, and
the threat of Gilmour's to shoot at sight, he would cer-
tainly know about Ingram's going out to post or
register a letter. The odd thing is that he was allowed
to send that package . . . and that no attempt was
made on his life beforehand. . . ."
"Well?" Franklin was forgetting to light up.
"Yet one would think that the murderer must have
foreseen its posting. He was so well up in all the other
details of life at The Tall House. Ingram was working
hard at something all afternoon, and more or less all
evening . . . the murderer must have been expecting
that it would be sent off. It looks, so far, as though he
wanted it posted."
"Waited for it, you think?"
Pointer said that it looked like it so far. "If so, it
cuts the ground out from under my idea of Ingram's
chance encounter with the man who took part in your
robbery."
"Unless," Franklin's blue eyes darkened, "that pack-
age contained something to do with counterfeit coining?
Say Ingram was suspicious . . . had got on the track
of some coiners, tested a piece of silver and found it
bad, and . . . but he had posted the package first."
They discussed the further possibilities for a brief
moment. Then Pointer was ready to go.
"I always think of you as soaring far above facts in
your deduction flights." Franklin chaffed him.
"When I'm in a fog, my dear chap, facts are like
palings to which I cling, groping for a fresh one before


144 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
I let go of the last. You've laid my hand on some
fine fat fellows with this robbery of yours, and I'm
much obliged, though a bit lost yet as to where they're
going to lead me."
Franklin burst into one of his big laughs. "Are you
in a fog here?"
"Either—or," was Pointer's only reply.
"I don't envy you this murder of yours," Franklin
said as they parted. "Which of the people up at The
Tall House strikes the oddest note? Fred Ingram or
this Tark?"
"Neither. Miss Longstaff," Pointer said promptly,
and was gone.


ELEVEN
Pointee turned over very carefully the new idea as to
why Ingram might have been murdered, as he drove
back to The Tall House.
It was rather suggestive, the notion of a man escap-
ing from a balked robbery, running slap into someone
whom he knew, fobbing him off for the moment with
some sketchy excuse, and having to kill him before the
papers should give the details, unless he was prepared
for arrest and penal servitude. Someone who knew The
Tall House, who had heard or had been told of this talk
about ghosts . . . seeing the lateness of the hour the
probabilities were strongly in favor of it being someone
who had himself heard that threat of Gilmour's. In fact,
the only certainty that Pointer had, so far, was that
the murderer knew of that talk.
He let himself quietly into the big house with its
raking sky line of five floors and a battlemented coping.
The room next to the library was locked. Why, no one
seemed to know. Inside it sat a plain clothes man
watching the unlocked library. The man had a careful
list of all who had gone into the room, and through the
145


146 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
keyhole, by means of a tiny ended periscope, had been
able to watch what each person did. Pointer had
"salted" the library a little while ago with papers
tucked in books or odd corners. Some of the papers
were quite blank, some of them were written on in what
looked like Ingram's peculiar, and, therefore, easily
copied, writing in what purported to be either mathe-
matical formulas or ciphers. Green of the Yard could
dash off a forgery in a couple of seconds which would
defy any but his own eyes to detect. His formulas and
his ciphers were the merest conglomeration of figures or
letters, but they looked quite impressive. Tark had been
in that room for nearly ten minutes now.
"Mrs. Pratt has been in twice just to have a look—
see," the man finished. "She's as good a watcher as one
of us. Hangs round one of the rooms opposite, seems
to give everybody three minutes, and then slips in and
is quite surprised to find anyone there, offers to help
and is politely thanked, and then whoever it is goes off
and, after a second, she looks about her and goes off
too."
Pointer was now watching Tark pounce on a slip of
paper, studying it with the look of a ravenous animal
on his usually impassive face. Then he stood a moment
the picture of indecision. As the door opened he tossed
the paper behind the couch.
It was Mrs. Pratt in a smart black and white frock
which only made her look gray and lined.
"Back again?" she murmured with a faint contemp-
tuous smile. "Perhaps I can save you trouble, Mr.
Tark," she said with that sparkle in her eye that


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 147
Pointer generally found meant hasty impulse in man or
woman. "The letter isn't here. It was burned."
"I don't understand you," Tark said stolidly.
"Oh, I think you do," she replied, still with height-
ened color. "I saw you looking up at us when I handed
it to Mr. Ingram. Well, it's burned and you won't be
able to use it—as you would like!"
"I don't know what you mean," Tark repeated. "I
saw you hand a paper to Ingram, yes, but papers you
hand your friends don't interest me, Mrs. Pratt." His
cold eyes flickered contemptuously over her.
Mrs. Pratt only gave the equivalent of a toss of her
head. "As though I don't know how much you would
like to find it—and use it!" and with that she was gone
again.
Tark stood looking after her, and seemed to think
that this was no time to continue his hunt, for he too
went on out, leaving the door ostentatiously wide open.
After a second Mrs. Pratt came back, closed the door,
stood a second listening, and then scrambled at full
length under the sofa for whatever it was that Tark
had tossed there on her entry.
Pointer decided on a few words. He stepped in so
swiftly and so noiselessly that until he shut the door she
had no idea anyone had entered. Then she tried to
wriggle back from her undignified position and Pointer
gravely assisted her, moving the sofa to let her get up.
She looked anything but grateful to him as she did so.
"Look here, Mrs. Pratt," he said on that, "I have
an idea you want something back that you lent Mr.
Ingram. Something besides that poem you asked him
to burn. Now we've taken quite a lot of papers away


148 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
with us. Unless it concerns the murder we don't want
to keep any of them. Yours may be among those that
we have. Suppose you tell me what is in it."
She stared hard at him, pursed her lips and straight-
ened her dress, flicking the dust off it here and there.
"Mr. Ingram burned those silly verses, as I just told
Mr. Tark, who would like to get hold of them and tease
me about them."
"A playful nature, evidently," Pointer murmured.
She shot him a cold and haughty glance, but he did
not seem to see it as she made for the door. He held it
open without another word. Mrs. Pratt was not going
to talk. She did not return to the opposite room but
went on up the stairs too. Pointer had his man join him
in the little room which he used as a sort of temporary
police station. There he looked through the man's list
of names and times spent in hunting in the library.
First had come Miss Longstaff; she had spent a quarter
of an hour when Mrs. Pratt had dropped in. The detec-
tive thought that Mrs. Pratt was distinctly suspicious
of the younger woman's motives for being there at all.
Miss Longstaff had said that she had mislaid a return
ticket and a letter from her mother while in there earlier
in the day, and "must have them back." Mrs. Pratt, as
had been said, showed a certain skepticism of this rea-
son.
"Your letter in here? How very odd! Did you bring
it down here, or do you think one of the maids carried it
downstairs from your bedroom?" she had asked sweetly.
Miss Longstaff said she had no thoughts on the mat-
ter but that she had been reading it when the dreadful
shock of this morning had made her come running down


150 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
left some very valuable notes here, which Ingram par-
ticularly wanted him to rush through for his next book.
That he had laid them down while talking with Ingram
and did not remember where. . . . Mrs. Pratt seemed
to have two strokes to most people's one, and she saw-
Frederick Ingram safely out of the room, having an-
other look when he had gone. What was the woman
after? Pointer could only guess that she was not so
satisfied as she seemed that Ingram really had burned
whatever she had handed him. What could that be? The
field was too wide and rested too entirely on speculation
for the chief inspector to waste any time over it. Cer-
tainly the two men examined any scrap of paper no
matter how tiny, whereas Mrs. Pratt only looked at
sheets of note-paper that resembled that stocked in
the writing-tables of the house, and used by Ingram
himself in the library, a gray paper with black heading.
That much bore out her statement about the silly
rhyme, but only that much. At all events, she and the
two men did not seem to be in each other's confidence.
As for Tark and Frederick Ingram, they seemed to be
strangers to each other, at any rate neither had been
seen talking to the other at The Tall House since In-
gram's death.
The inquest was fixed for the afternoon. For a while
the coroner seemed inclined to dally with the idea of the
unbolted front door, but as a coroner's court has only
to decide the cause of death, and in this case it was
most clearly and undisputably death from a bullet, he
could not waste much time on that.
Frederick Ingram ventilated his doubts of Gilmour's
story as to a blunder having been made. But all the |


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 151
other witnesses who knew the two men, including his
sister, spoke so warmly of the years of uninterrupted
friendliness between them that he did not make the
impression which he obviously hoped to do.
And, very fortunately for Gilmour, a very eminent
Cambridge don, a friend of the dead man's, told of an
incident which had happened only this last Easter on
Scawfell. Ingram and Gilmour had tried a rather haz-
ardous cross cut, Ingram had slipped to a narrow ledge
and lay unconscious. Gilmour had reached him with
some difficulty, and sat between him and the precipice,
signaling and calling for help. The Cambridge master
had been out, too, with some friends, and had heard
the cries.
Ingram had been rescued, and after a day in bed
was none the worse for an adventure which, but for
Gilmour, might have turned into a tragedy. This piece
of evidence flattened out any effect made by Frederick.
As for Winnie Pratt, she gave Gilmour an impas-
sioned testimonial which secretly roused him to feelings
little short of homicidal, and even Moy bit his lips
nervously. But Winnie was only questioned for a mo-
ment, she could give no evidence of any fresh kind.
Miss Longstaff was not called.
The weapon was produced, the man who sold the
blank cartridges showed how next to impossible it would
have been for the suppliers to have made a mistake in
a box labeled "Blank Cartridges." The police put in
the two sheets each with a hole in it, one near the hem,
one a good fifteen inches from the edge. Gilmour gave
his version of what had happened and explained the
substitution of a faked sheet for the real one as an idea


152 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
of some member of the house party fond of a dramatic
incident, who wanted to see how the police would come
at the truth. Here his glance fell on Wfnnie Pratt, who
smiled gently and encouragingly back at him.
The police themselves offered no objection to this |
theory. The coroner summed up in a way certainly not
hostile to Gilmour, the jury went further, and brought
in a verdict of death by misadventure, expressing their
sympathy with the sister of the dead man, and with his
friend, the unfortunate firer of the fatal shot. They put
in a rider as to the danger of practical jokes, and the
likelihood of them having unforeseen consequences.
"I congratulate you," Moy said warmly to Gilmour
as they left the coroner's court together. Gilmour
looked at him.
"Would you like to have to sit down under a verdict |
of Not Proven?" he asked quietly. "Would you let
the woman you love think you a murderer?"
"How can she think it! What motive "Moy said
again, almost impatiently.
"Miss Pratt has represented me as being secretly de-
voted to her own fair self, and only faithful to Alfreda
because I thought I owed it to her." Gilmour spoke
bitterly. "I knew something had poisoned her mind
when she came up to town—it's all that wretched girl's
doing. Alfreda loved me sincerely, down at Bispham.
I gave her, as well as myself, time to be sure of our
feelings and went down there and got her to come and
stay with us. I noticed a slight change then ... a
coldness, a sort of indifference ... I thought she was
vexed that I had gone away, but I think now that she
had heard something about the beautiful Winnie being


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 153
here. At any rate, the girl who turned up next day for
lunch was no more my bright, amusing Alfreda, best of
companions, cheeriest of comrades, than it was a Dutch-
man. She had been 'got at.' In other words, she thinks
she has reason to be jealous, and a jealous girl is never
at her best." Gilmour finished with a sigh. "She'll
come round of course," he added, "but when—how
"and he fell silent. Moy said nothing. He had told
the police, but not Gilmour, of the meeting in the linen
room this morning. What was Frederick Ingram doing
in there with Alfreda Longstaff?
The assistant commissioner had been present too—
unofficially—at the inquest. He was discussing it with
Pointer as they drove away.
"I rather hoped to find out who was Gilmour's and
Ingram's enemy," Pelham said, lighting up, "for if the
man's telling the truth, and he made a truthful impres-
sion, he has an enemy and a bitter one! Personally,
apart from the impression made on me, his absence of
any sort of a good yarn to account for that first sheet
sounds like an honest man. You've been delving deep
into Ingram's past. Have you found out any peculiar-
ities? Moy speaks as though it were the plain and level
high road."
"There's one odd thing," Pointer said. "Moy doesn't
seem to know about it. How did Ingram manage to
change the eight thousand odd his father left him, after
death duties were paid, into thirty thousand odd? For
that's the sum he has left behind him. Allowing for the
rise in the securities his father left him, and the ones
he himself has put his money into—and he seems to


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 155
father's capital constantly turned over very much to its
increase, and this strange thousand pounds every quar-
ter of the last five years, also well invested and fre-
quently changed, makes up the rest."
"What do his stockbrokers say? Who are they?"
"Cash and Weirdale."
"I know them. Good but old-fashioned. Nothing
dubious would pass them, I think. What do they say
about the thousand pounds a quarter? Was it sent them
by check in the usual way on Settling Day—or paid in
by half-crowns?" Pelham finished with a smile.
"Neither, sir. Mr. Ingram would personally drop in
every quarter day, quite irrespective of whether it was
End Account or Buying for New Time, and hand over
personally ten packets of one-hundred pound notes."
"'Forgeries?' asks Chief Inspector Blackwell at that
point in the story," Pelham said with interest.
"No, sir. Not as far as we know. The firm had had
dealings with Mr. Ingram for years or they would have
refused such a way of dealing, but in his case, of course,
they accepted it as a quaint bit of oddity."
"Very quaint, and most uncommonly odd!" agreed
Pelham. "A thousand pounds every quarter day . . .
is it possible we have here that never-yet-seen-in-the-
flesh character, the gambler with a certain System
which consistently wins?"
"I thought of that, sir," Pointer said.
"You would!" Pelham spoke in a resigned tone.
"Well?"
Pointer laughed. "Well, sir, we sent his picture to
all the big gambling resorts and he's definitely not
known there. Nor has he ever been away for long from


156 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
his flat or house. But there is a roulette table, old and
dusty, in his rooms in a cupboard, snowed under, and
not been used for at least a year. But there it is. For
what it's worth."
"Do you think it's worth anything?" Pelham asked,
cocking an eye at him.
"It may be some legacy of Fred Ingram's, sir. But I
confess it's odd. . . . Yet against the gambling idea,
apart from no hint of it ever having been whispered
about him, as far as we know, is the fact that he only
paid in, never out from, his account any largish sums."
"Looks like the half-crowns," Pelham murmured in
jest.
"It's a case with many possibilities," Pointer agreed.
"That possible encounter with the masked man after
the post-office robbery"
"Mrs. Appleton looks twenty years older," Pelham
said suddenly, "yet she and her brother didn't see much
of each other these latter years, and if Gilmour's story
is true, she would consider that he died as the result of
a sheer accident. You said she looked vastly relieved
when Gilmour told her exactly what happened."
"She did. But as you say, sir, she didn't look relieved
today at the inquest."
"Has she been searching the library too?"
"Not since her one search. But I told her that we
wondered whether any visitor had been in Mr. Ingram's
bedroom last night, and she promptly made an excuse
and slipped in there—unobserved, as she fancied. Again
she emptied all the cigarette ash out of the window."
"Was there any? I thought Ingram didn't smoke
cigarettes."


158 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
“Well, that is odd!” Pelham said frankly.
“Moy has told me something that rather alters
things,” Pointer went on. “By their marriage settle-
ments she and Appleton agreed to go halves in any
legacy left them. There was a wealthy great uncle of
both who was expected to leave one or other his money.
He did, to Appleton, who quietly wriggled out of pay-
But the settlement wasn't changed. So Appleton is
really a co-heir with his wife, though it's only a ques-
tion of the interest on the money, which goes intact to
the children.”
Pelham smoked thoughtfully without making any
comment. They were back at the Yard by this time, in
the assistant commissioner's room. He reached for a
book behind him and opened it at a page which he had
marked with a slip.
“I bought this at an auction last week. It's an old
work on crime by Luigi Pinna, translated by some con-
temporary. There's a delightful passage which puts the
case beautifully, and in words of one syllable. Listen:
‘In numerous cases the sole difference between success
and failure in the detection of crime is a sort of osmotic
mental reluctance to seep through the cilia of what
seems to be and reach the vital stream of what actually
is.' How do you propose to seep through the cilia,
Pointer?”
“Well, sir, it sounds rather odd. But I want to have
all disappearances during the last three months to six
months in, or near, London looked up. I'm only inter-
ested in solitary people-men or women-preferably


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 159
odd looking. No dwarfs wanted, nor giants, nor very
thin people ..."
“What in the name of Minerva are you up to?” the
A. C. asked. “Disappearances and Ingram's death?
How are they linked?”
"I hope you won't press that question, sir. I would
be very grateful if I needn't answer it at this stage.
I may be quite wrong. It's just a possibility ..."
“The classic answer of the gifted sleuth,” Pelham
murmured good humoredly. “The dark curtains being
drawn before they part with a bang and the lights go
up, while the audience cheers, eh?”
“I wish I could feel certain of that last part, sir.
What if the lights refuse to go up, and the audience
laughs instead? But seriously, there is just a possibility
which has been in my mind from the beginning ... if
I can find what I'm feeling for, it would lead straight
to the solution of the puzzle.”
“And to the motive at the same time?” Pelham asked.
Pointer shook his head.
“Not necessarily, sir, but it would lead to the crim-
inal—if it leads anywhere."
“Humph ... well, I'll let you answer my questions
at your own convenience then. But as to motive ...
no ideas at all?”
"I can't think of anything that will fit the case, sir.
And I assure you, it's not due to osmotic mental reluc-
tance."
Pointer laughed. "I've been trying to find out if Mr.
Ingram went in for crossword competitions. It would be
odd to win so regularly, but he has brains that would
lend themselves to that sort of thing, one would think.


160 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
It seems, however, that he particularly disliked them.
Mrs. Appleton told me that if the children started ask-
ing 'what word of four letters means feeble,' or 'one of
seven means dashed hopes,' and so on ... he would
fly, and everyone else tells me the same thing."
"Looks like ciphers," Pelham said, serious again.
"Big business firms will pay anything you like for un-
readable ciphers, or for help in solving those stolen or
intercepted from rival firms. And of course there still
remains government ciphers . . . and Mrs. Pratt's
one-time maid, you know . . ."
"And her husband who fell overboard . . ." Pointer
finished. "I've looked up the record of that. Appar-
ently Mr. Pratt was really out on deck by himself when
he fell over."
"It's a subtle crime," Pelham said after a moment's
silence. "This of Ingram's death. And clever. To get
another man to do your shooting for you is really good.
The curious thing was that change in the sheets . . ."
"Very," Pointer agreed. "It paid us such a compli-
ment. Most of the people one meets seem to think a
detective can't see things unless he stumbles over them."
"I never heard anyone who ever met you, let alone
saw you at work, speak of that as one of your failings,"
Pelham murmured.
"Still, sir, it was a compliment to us to feel so sure
that we would notice the wrong placing of that hole, if
done purposely . . ."


TWELVE
About an hour after the inquest, Moy got a message
that Mrs. Appleton would like to speak to him on the
telephone. »
"Do come round to see me as soon as you can," she
begged. "I'm thinking about Mr. Gilmour. It's a dread-
ful position for him. I'm staying at my brother's flat at
Harrow for the present, as you know, but I shall be at
Markham Square all the afternoon."
When Moy went round, as he did at once, he found to
his surprise that Tark was in the little drawing-room
talking to a rather distrait-looking hostess. As Moy
was shown in, Tark said that he would wait until Moy
had finished, and go back with him, if he might, as there
was something that he wanted to talk to the solicitor
about.
Mrs. Appleton gave a nod that suggested inattention
more than agreement, and Tark stepped out into the
little passage, and Moy heard him opening and then
closing a door farther down on the same side. The door
of Appleton's den. So he could find his way about the
house. . . . Moy had thought that he did not know
161


162 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Ingram's sister or brother-in-law... but Moy
dropped Tark, and what he might have to say to him,
and devoted himself to Mrs. Appleton.
She had been deeply moved, she said, by the look of
suffering in Gilmour's face and she had just heard that
Miss Longstaff had broken with him.
"I don't know that there's anything one can do, Mrs.
Appleton," Voy said rather hopelessly. "I quite agree
with you, it's awful for him, but how to help him is
another matter."
"I can't bear the situation." she said suddenly to
that. “It's an intolerable one for me, Charles's sister!"
So it was not for Gilmour that she wanted to see him
after all, Moy thought.
“You know, I've been wondering whether some one
couldn't have shot Charles over Lawrence Gilmour's
shoulder, just as he fired the blank cartridge ..." She
looked very white and very tense as she said this. "I
mean, Mr. Gilmour may be right in thinking he fired a
blank shot, and yet Charles may have been shot dead
but by someone else.”
"T're thought of the same possibility myself,” Moy
said, "but it seems so far-fetched. Besides, it would
mean that someone was in Gilmour's room, unknown to
him, who fired through the open door at the exact sec-
ond that Gilmour did.”
"Well? He would lift his arm to fire. There would
be plenty of time to know when he was going to pull the
trigger.” Her voice sounded harsh, as though her
throat were dry. "Mind you," she went on hastily, “I
wouldn't say this to the police for worlds. Nor hare
them know I ever thought it." Her vehemence told Moy


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 163
that her nerves must be frightfully on edge. "But as
you're our friend—friend to all three of us, Charles,
Edward, Gilmour and to me—I know I can talk things
over with you without fear of consequences."
Moy assured her that she could. But he looked at her
a trifle oddly.
"As Gilmour thinks that he was alone," he went on,
"your idea would mean that some one hid in his room
and stepped out just as he himself stood in the doorway
with the door open, and while your brother was walking
away down the passage."
"Well," she said, "there is a built-in cupboard just
by the fireplace exactly opposite to the door. It's not
used. The room is carpeted from wall to wall."
"True," Moy said slowly, "he wouldn't have had even
to step out, just swing the cupboard door wide open
. . . counting on the fact that when Charles fell Gil-
mour would rush forward and leave the bedroom door
open . . . but I think I should have seen him . . ."
"You too rushed to Charles's side. And were trying
to find a switch that would work," she said under her
breath, her eyes wide and dark.
It was true. He had paid no attention to the rest of
the passage except to the white mound on the floor out-
side Ingram's room half-way down.
"That would mean that your supposed murderer was
a good deal taller than Gilmour—which might easily
be, for he's short—or have stood on a hassock."
"There is a hassock in that room, a huge leather
one." She twisted her fingers tightly together on her
knee.
"He'd have to be a crack shot, as well as a particu-


164- THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
larly callous brute," Moy finished hotly. Mrs. Appleton
kept her eyes fastened on her tightly clenched hands.
"Yes," she said so low that he barely caught it. "Or
have been mad."
"Mad! No madness in such a plan!" he retorted
almost reprovingly.
"But madness is wanting a fortune at any cost—at
any price!" she finished still under her breath.
"But how would Ingram's death have given"
Moy stopped, and suddenly he saw what all this meant.
The woman's white face, the horror in her dilated eyes.
... So Appleton had not been at home last night. The
alibi that she had given was false. She suspected her
husband of having murdered her brother ... a horri-
ble position. But she had nothing to go on, surely . . .
Of course Appleton was a splendid shot. He got many
an invitation on that account in the autumn, and he
was just the right height to have fired over Gilmour's
shoulder, or even over his head, at Ingram. . . . But
he wouldn't know about that cupboard. Appleton had
never been upstairs in The Tall House. Besides, he
couldn't be sure that his wife would still inherit under
her brother's will, though it wouldn't be like Ingram to
change his will without letting Mrs. Appleton know.
. . . Where was Appleton, by the way? He had not
seen him except for a few minutes at the inquest. Moy
remembered now that he had come in after his wife and
sat down some distance away. Near the door.
"You didn't see anything that bears out my fantastic
idea?" she said, looking at him with tragic eyes. "I
mean, now, thinking back?"
He assured her that as he had just said, he thought


168 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Tark's short, low, sneering laugh was his answer to
that last assertion.
"Your wife feels as sure of that as I do," he said.
"It's true!" flamed out Appleton suddenly. "Damn
you, it's true! She's been talking to you, has she!"
Tark eyed him with the intent, unmoved, watching
gaze of a man accustomed to use his fellow-men, to
make the most of any opportunity that came his way.
"No matter how I learned about it," he said briefly,
"I do know, that's enough. Now then, what about the
offer in writing for which I'm here, to be left behind
when we set off for foreign parts? Just in case history
should repeat itself, eh? Just you and me on a trip
together—Fred Ingram is still hunting."
Chief Inspector Pointer had taken the bus ticket to
the head office. There they told him that it had been
punched late on the evening on which Ingram had been
shot, and was for the distance from before Markham
Square to a little beyond the street in which was The
Tall House. He was now for the first time able to see
the ticket collector who had been on duty at the time.
Pointer reminded him that it was the night of the heat
wave, one of the hottest nights in England for the last
fifty years. The man remembered it perfectly. He had
only had one passenger inside. A tall chap with a
twitchy face. He remembered him, because he had
jumped off the bus so hastily on catching sight of a
friend on the pavement that he had all but fallen head-
long in the road. The conductor had steadied him.
"Did you see his friend? The man on the pavement?"


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 169
"He was just turning a corner. Couldn't catch sight
of his face."
So that Appleton, for the description fitted him,
must have known the man quite well to have recognized
him from that glimpse.
"Was your fare any of these?" Pointer laid some
photographs before the man.
"That's him!" The collector touched Appleton's pic-
ture. "He's often up and down our way. Lives along
there."
He had not seen him in company with any of the
other faces shown him. Did he see the actual meeting
between the passenger and the man on the pavement?
"A bit of it." His fare had hurried after the other man,
overtaken him, and caught hold of his elbow. They
seemed quite friendly. At least the other had not
snatched his arm away. Pointer further learned that
the pedestrian might well have been Ingram, though
this was purely negative, inasmuch as the man had not
been old, nor big, nor fat . . .
Pointer next went on to see Appleton, and that was
how he came to send in his name just as Tark was
putting a folded paper away in his letter-case while
Appleton stood watching him with a face of fury. Tark
shot a swift glance around as the maid entered with
"a gentleman to see you, sir," and held out Pointer's
card.
"I'll go out that way," Tark breathed in the other's
ear, and made for the double door leading into some
other room. Appleton detained the maid.
"When you've shown, the gentleman in, show this
other out. Be sure he goes at once."


170 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Pointer looked very grave and very stiff.
"Mr. Appleton, why have you not told us that you
walked back to The Tall House with Mr. Ingrain the
night on which he was shot? That you had a talk with
him in the library there." This was guess work, due to
the ticket, and Mrs. Appleton's interest in cigarette
ash. Appleton was smoking a very peculiar Greek brand
of cigarette.
"For the very good reason that I did none of these
things," Appleton said sharply. His twitchy face was
absolutely still as he turned it to the other. Pointer felt
as though it were held so rigid that a finger pressed
against the cheek would not even make a dent.
"You were recognized," he said warningly.
"I couldn't have been, since I wasn't there," Apple-
ton tossed back in as firm a voice. "What you mean,
chief inspector, is that someone thought he recognized
me. He made a mistake. I often did drop in for a chat
with my brother-in-law, but not as it happens on that
evening." He drummed on the table. His fidgets began
to come back, now that the strain for which he had
pulled himself together had gone, or lessened.
"Pity," Pointer said thoughtfully. "You might have
been able to help us. Supposing Mr. Ingram's death
was not accident, can't you suggest anything, Mr.
Appleton, which might have been a motive for his mur-
der?"
Again the face stiffened, grew still and set.
"His work, for instance," Pointer went on, not ap-
parently glancing at the other man, "or something
connected with his writing."
Appleton was quite pale, but he shook his head. He


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 171
sat down in a chair so hastily that it looked as though
he fell into it.
"The inquest has just decided that it was death by
misadventure," he said in a curiously halting voice. "I
don't pretend, chief inspector, that I think things don't
look odd . . . anyone could have tampered with that
revolver, as I've said from the beginning." He shot an
odd, sly look at the chief inspector, sly and yet deter-
mined. "I don't pretend to agree with the finding of
the inquest," he said again. "I'm glad you're looking
into the matter." He did not look glad, but he did look
oddly persistent and haunted.
"Yes, I have a horrid sort of fear that perhaps it
wasn't an accident," he went on. "I had intended to
say nothing about such a possibility, but—well—some-
how I feel it would be letting Ingram down. I have an
idea he had some cipher or other of great potential
value, and that he was murdered for that . . ." Apple-
ton threw out his chest and pulled himself in until he
looked like a majestic pouter pigeon. His dark, large,
flat eyes fastened themeslves on the chief inspector's
face. "Don't you think yourself, chief inspector, that
there's something odd about the affair?" he asked.
"It's quite an idea," Pointer replied evasively, and
as though much struck by its novelty. "But can't you
suggest what sort of a cipher . . . where we ought to
look for the criminal if there is one?"
No. Appleton assured him that he had only a vague
uneasiness that things were not right, but that he had
no idea as to who could possibly want to murder his
brother-in-law.
"Of course if it was a cipher," Pointer murmured, as


172 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
though confiding in his cigarette—one of Ingram's—
"one wonders whether his proof-reader wouldn't know
something about it . . ."
Appleton drew in a quiok breath, his eyes bulged for
a moment but he said nothing, only tapped the knuckle
of his first finger reflectively against his teeth, which
gave him an odd appearance of uneasiness.
"Possible," he muttered. "That's really what I won-
dered. Whether . . . it's a ghastly idea, suspecting
this person and that, but if it was anything to do with
his papers, why of course Frederick Ingram would be
by way of knowing about it . . ."
Appleton leaned forward, one hand on the table, a
white, well-kept hand but thin and hollow-sinewed; the
hand of a man who was really very ill.
"It's ghastly for everyone," he went on in a tired
voice, "I mean anyone who also feels uneasy, not to
know who did it. But in confidence, chief inspector, I
think you ought to keep an eye on him—and on Tark,"
he added vindictively and suddenly.
"I thought you were doing that," Pointer said inno-
cently.
Appleton turned very gray. "Tark? I, or no, he . . .
I . . . no, I hardly know him," he murmured.
"Yet you correspond . . ." Pointer seemed puzzled.
"I may as well tell you that I saw a letter from you to
him "So Pointer had, but in Tark's letter-case.
Appleton had a very odd writing, rather beflourished
and with exaggerated capitals.
"Oh, merely a reply to a question that came up once
at The Tall House," Appleton said swiftly. "We were
discussing some question of engine power of the new


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 173
little B.S.A. cars, you know the ones with the fluid
Daimler drive, and I stated definitely some figure which
surprised Tark. When I got home I found that I had
misread a statement of the B.S.A. Co. chairman's, and
wrote putting right my mistake." His flat eyes flitted
nervously across the other's impassive face. Pointer
could not tell him he was a liar. It was a possible ex-
planation but Tark hardly looked the kind of man to
carry such a letter around with him. And the envelope
that Pointer had seen in his case was quite well worn.
When Pointer left, together with Appleton's cigar-
ette, he knew that Appleton had been to The Tall
House for some reason—after some object—that he
could not, or would not, avow. That search of Mrs.
Appleton's for some paper or papers ... it looked to
Pointer as though her husband had got it, or them,
since he himself made no effort to rummage among
Ingram's belongings. But Tark had done so, and Tark
had been followed to this house, and had been heard
several times asking for Appleton over the 'phone. He
knew that he was in the house when he himself had
arrived. Pointer's watcher had told the chief inspector
that Tark had come quite openly. Was that because he
had to? Because Appleton would not meet him outside?
Pointer would learn with interest whether Tark now
discontinued his search or not. Prom the look of purple
fury on Appleton's face, he, Pointer, would not be sur-
prised if Tark had got the better of the other in
some battle of wits or wills or threats. The question
was—even supposing that Appleton had got some docu-
ment for which the other, and possibly his wife too, had
been looking—did it stand for anything in Ingram's


174 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
death? Mrs. Appleton had shown plainly enough, Poin-
ter thought, that she suspected something of the kind.
She had left Markham Square at once after the tragedy
and gone, with her two little boys, to her dead brother's
flat at Harrow, merely notifying Gilmour of the fact
after she had installed herself, saying that the children
needed fresher air than they were having in Chelsea and
that she would see to it that they did not overflow into
his rooms. Gilmour had assured her that the entire flat
was at her disposal for as long as she would like to stay
there.
Mrs. Appleton's face and manner quite negatived—
to Pointer—the idea that she had come on some clue
pointing to her husband which she had suppressed, and
that her husband felt himself safe for that reason.
Appleton did not look as though he felt himself safe.
Quite the contrary. Appleton looked a man living in the
shadow of some fear, but Pointer thought that the fear
was a definite, not a vague one. There were parts of
his path in which he felt himself quite safe, and parts
where he inwardly trembled, so the chief inspector, an
unusually astute and penetrating observer, read the
man. Tark disclaimed all knowledge of Appleton, as
Appleton did of him. Appleton had traveled a good deal
. . . gambled a good deal . . . Tark lived near Monte
Carlo . . . Mrs. Pratt came from Geneva . . . von
of de which the expert still claimed was part of a
cipher . . . Mrs. Pratt had once had a maid who was
an international spy . . . hell light claike . . .
The tobacco shreds under the pillow, and yet Ingram's
waistcoat, empty of everything that could interest any-
one, lying on his chair. The inner secret pocket with its


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
175
they but shattered bits of many circles? He was think-
ing them over as he left Appleton, left without any
inquiry as to Tark. Let Appleton think himself unob-
served, his next step in that case might be a helpful one
as to settling his own status in the death of his brother-
in-law.


THIRTEEN
When the chief inspector had left him, Appleton fell
back into a chair looking as though he were half-
fainting. For a long minute he lay passive, breathing
hard, then he got better, and sitting up, dived into an
inner pocket of his waistcoat, a pocket rather on the
style of his dead brother-in-law's. From it he drew an
envelope of oiled silk, such as is used by travelers to
carry soap. From it he took another envelope and
from this a paper covered with minute but very legible
figures and writing.
He bent over it. So engrossed was he that he did not
hear a light step come into the hall. After a minute his
study door was opened, and his wife came in carrying
some flowers in her hand. She turned with a start. So
did he. The paper slid from his knee. In an instant she
and he both swooped on it. He, being nearer, got it
first. She turned, her face a dreadful, livid white, and,
with her hand outstretched before her as though sud-
denly stricken blind, made for the door. But, again, he
got there first.
He drew himself up, hand on knob, and thrust out his
176


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
177
chest in his pouter pigeon attitude. "Ada!" came in
round sonorous tones. "What do you mean by looking
at me like that?"
"I think I knew all along," she said under her breath,
her eyes now half-closed. "And because of the children,
I have to stand by and do nothing. As you knew that
I would!"
"Charles gave it me," Appleton said to that, "he
gave it me himself."
She made a gesture of incredulity and despair, and
seemed to walk through him as white fire will cut
through any opposition.
Tark, meanwhile, had left the house in Markham
Square immediately the chief inspector arrived, and
returned to The Tall House. He was leaving that same
afternoon, he said.
Now that the inquest was over, the household was
fleeing as though from a plague spot. Miss Longstaff
asked for a word with him. She began about the in-
quest first, which she had not attended, then suddenly
looked at him with that odd stare of hers.
"Mr. Tark, I have a conviction that you know the
motive for Mr. Ingram's death."
He returned her stare with one as unreadable.
"You frighten me," he said, his tight lips hardly
moving. "Next thing, you'll be accusing me of having
caused his death. The inquest brought it in as 'Death
by Misadventure,' you know."
"You were hunting all yesterday on the quiet," she
went on as though he had not spoken, "for something
definite, too. A paper of some sort. Look here, why


178 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
not take me in as a helper? I'm desperately keen on
solving this crime—if it was a crime."
"You evidently think it was, from the position you've
taken up with regard to Gilmour," he replied indiffer-
ently. And his indifference was real. This man did not
care whether Ingram had been shot by accident or of
deliberate intention. She saw that.
"It's the only possible position until things are
clear," she retorted, but without heat. "Come, Mr.
Tark, why not let us work together?"
There was open derision now in his unmerry smile
that for a second just loosened those closed lips of his.
"I'm afraid I shall not be able to help." There was no
attempt at concealment of the mockery in his tone.
"I'm leaving for my home tonight."
"Is Mr. Haliburton going with you?" she asked.
"Possibly. Possibly not. We occasionally leave each
other's side, Miss Longstaff. May I ask you why you
thought he might be coming with me? Did you think
Miss Pratt and I were eloping, and he would want to be
the third?" The man's manner was courteous enough,
however jeering his tone, or his words. He held the door
open for her with almost a bow as she walked towards
it. Miss Longstaff looked at him, but not even the chief
inspector could read that face above hers, except that
he now showed intentionally a sardonic amusement at
her effort to read it. He said good-by, still in the same 1
key, and then went in search of Haliburton. That young
man was pacing to and fro in the drawing-room, evi-
dently on the watch for Miss Pratt. He looked up hope-
fully at Tark's light footfall, a step almost inaudible
even on creaky parquet.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 179
"Oh!" he said lamely, and again Tark permitted two
lines to crease each side of his mouth.
"I'm saying good-by." He came in. "I'm going back
home tonight. This sun makes me long for the real
thing."
Haliburton nodded. He was not paying much atten-
tion.
"Who would have thought that she would take it like
this!" he burst out suddenly. Anyone less suitable as a
confidant for love's vaporings could not be imagined
than the leather-faced Tark, but he only nodded.
"You never know how the cards will run," he mur-
mured. "By the way, Haliburton, care to make a specu-
lative investment? 'Big Profits probable, Small Loss
possible' sort of thing?"
"What do you mean by big profits?" Haliburton
spoke as though a trifle bored.
"Four hundred per cent." Tark's voice was low.
"This is entirely confidential, mind you. Even the offer,
I mean. Even the existence of the offer. But if you like
to let me have five hundred, I can promise you two
thousand in three months' time, to the day."
"You can have the five hundred," Haliburton said
after a moment's thought. "But as a personal loan. To
be used in any way you like. And I want no interest
on it."
"Thanks," Tark said briefly. "But you've missed a
chance. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't have made the
offer to anyone but you."
As is human nature, when the offer was not pressed,
it tempted more.
"Then you did have your talk with Ingram?" Hali-


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 181
was the reason the solicitor had not stayed longer with
Mrs. Appleton. Just now the two young fellows were
both looking tremendously stirred up. Gilmour was
speaking.
"I appreciate your reason for trying to dissuade me,
!Moy, but I've stumbled on something very odd . . .
You know, I've been certain that Ingram died just as I
described it. But "He stopped and seemed to fall
into a brown study. Moy stared at him expectantly.
"Well?" he asked, as the other said nothing. "Well?
Have you told the police about it?"
Gilmour shook his head, and Moy wondered if the
clue led to Appleton, for Gilmour was a sort of un-
official uncle to the two Appleton children.
He waited in great anxiety for the next words.
"It's nothing they could deal with," Gilmour said
slowly. "It's not a clue—yet. It's only existence—so
far—is in someone's recollection of something. Well,
they're hardly likely to go all out on such a foundation.
But as it happens, a chance word has made me remem-
ber something too, that half fits . . . might fit . . ."
He broke off again.
"Whose was the memory that jogged yours?" Moy
asked.
"Miss Longstaff let slip something—oh, she had no
idea of any importance in what she said—but it fitted
most oddly into something "and again to Moy's
impatience, Gilmour stopped.
"I hope you're going to let me in on whatever it is,"
Moy said promptly. What could Alfreda Longstaff
know? But Gilmour went on to dash his hopes.
"I don't want to talk about it to anyone. But I wish


182 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
you would take charge of this envelope"—he took one
out of his pocket—"and if I don't turn up by this time
next week, or you haven't heard from me over the
'phone, I want you to hand it in yourself to Chief In-
spector Pointer. Look, it's addressed to him. Now Fll
enclose it in this blank one, on which I scribble your
name." Gilmour proceeded to do so. "Have you a
candle and some wax?" Moy had. Gilmour sealed the
covering envelope and handed it to the other. "Every-
thing is in that. It tells what I'm after, and why. But
for heavens' sake don't let any one read it unless I don't
come back, for I'm quite frank in it, and say precisely
to whom my information points. Someone who may be
perfectly innocent."
"Well, if you don't come back, the likelihood is that
they aren't innocent," Moy said reasonably enough.
"By God!" Gilmour spoke in a tone of passion that
startled the other, "I'd be willing enough not to come
back, if that would be a help!"
Then his voice became calm once more. "I want you
to explain to Miss Longstaff tomorrow." He looked at
Moy with rather a hangdog look. "You know, I think
it's very fine of her, I mean, not being willing to marry
a man whom she thinks capable of murdering his friend.
That she does think me that, isn't her fault. I know
whose tongue has dropped sweet poison into her ears!
But about Alfreda, there aren't too many standards in
the world, and it's up to the women, the young women,
as I see it, to keep their flags flying."
"Unless like Miss Pratt they believe you incapable of
murder," Moy said to that. "Frankly, since you've


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 183
brought the subject up, I must say that's the attitude
I prefer in a girl."
Gilmour was not listening. He was intent on giving
the other very careful instructions connected with that
letter.
"I said to hand it on, unless you hear from me over
the 'phone. Well, I want to arrange with you about
that. If you get a message that sounds sensible enough,
but as though it referred to something about which you
know nothing, then I want you to take it as an S.O.S.
and hand that letter on as I asked you just now. What
I mean is this: Suppose you hear me—undeniably me—
at the end of the wire saying something like this:
* 'Eraid I shan't be able to come down with you to the
Smiths' cocktail party tonight' or 'You'll have to count
me out for the box I promised to share' or any other
excuse about my not being able to be, or go, somewhere
of which we've never spoken, then you'll understand
that it's an appeal for the Yard's help. You see, if I
were in a tight place, I might spoof the people who had
me there into letting me telephone you some perfectly
innocent sounding excuse as to why I couldn't turn up
with you, but, as I say, ^om'11 know what it really
means, and will act at once."
They discussed it for fully another minute. Moy
rather shrank from such a frightful responsibility, but
apparently it was the best thing that Gilmour could
arrange in his own protection, flimsy though it seemed
to Moy. He begged Gilmour to be more open with him.
Gilmour thought it over for a while, then shook his head.
"I think it would only arouse suspicion. But I'll tell
you this: I shouldn't be surprised if I had to leave


184 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
England to follow the clue I'm after, or rather to get
hold of it. More than that I can't say. But I assure
you you couldn't help half as much by knowing what
I'm going to try to do, as you will by sitting on that
letter. I may not need it, in which case when I'm back
and read it. But should I be on the right track, and
should that track lead me into a hole, it'll be a wonder-
fully pleasant thought to know that you have it and will
pass it on at a word from me. No, I won't say more.
And I won't even tell you how I mean to make what
For I'm fearfully proud of it-my plan, I mean. But
you'd much better know nothing."
In that much Moy agreed with him.
“You won't get clear,” he said confidently, and warn-
ingly, "and for your own sake, as I've said a dozen
both know you're being watched. Of course you are!
You'd never be able to show a clean pair of heels to a
Yard man, and the attempt would only be absolutely
misunderstood. Seriously misunderstood. And frankly,
well, you know yourself you can't afford that! Which
is the sole and only reason why I don't insist on coming
with you."
Gilmour only gave a little confident laugh. “Wait
and see!" was all he said as he finally left the other.
He went back to The Tall House, his head full of his
plans. There he asked if Miss Longstaff were in. She
was, and he found her in the library putting some books
back in their place. It was amazing how popular the


186 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
second she hesitated. Was she all wrong? Jaundiced
Unfair?
She shook her head. "I can't feel like that not sine
what has happened here."
"You really think I had a conscious, intentional ham
in that dreadful blunder?" he asked.
She did not reply except by her silence and that u:
readable stare of hers fixed unwinkingly on him.
"If that horrible thought is all that stands betwee
us, then I don't think it will stand long." He spoke in
low eager tone. "But I wish you'd be frank with me."
"I don't think you do," she retorted, her chin in the
air. "Or if you do, you're mistaken. You wouldn't reallj
wish me to tell you all I think about—us—Mr. In-
gram's shooting—everything."
"If you would tell me why you have this awful sus-
picion," he went on doggedly, "supposing it's reallj
yours and not just suggested to you by someone else,
then it might help me. Wait!" as she would have spoken,
"you said something the other morning—oh, no, if you
won't be frank, neither will I be now, which "He
fell silent, gazing out of the window with wide open eyes
and a sort of breathless look to his face. He stood like
that for a full second before he went on quietly. "Whict
fits in with something I know which I thought of no
use, no importance . . . but as we're not to be friend*
—yet—I won't say more. When I can clear myself I
shall speak again, Alfreda, and again ask you to mam
me, and if I'm successful in what I'm going after, I
don't think you will refuse me next time. Tell me, if I
can clear myself absolutely—undeniably—of any sus,


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 187
:>icion of having killed Ingram intentionally, your an-
»wer would be yes?"
Again, in spite of herself, Alfreda was touched by
tone and look, and by his words too. Supposing, just
supposing, that her suspicions were all wrong, what an
utter beast she had been, was being. She drew a.deep
breath.
"I don't think you could ever forgive me for acting
as I've done," she said in a voice which, for her, was
quite faltering, "and I don't think I should care to be
forgiven and have to live with my forgiver "Her
smile had real mischief in it for once, "but if you can
explain Ingram's death, the puzzle of it all, why, of
course, I should be more than glad! More than thank-
ful! But how are you going to set about it? How can
you hope to solve this puzzle?"
"I have an idea where to look and what to look for,"
lie said guardedly. "I can't be franker now, but when
T reappear, you shall hear everything."
"Oh, you're going to disappear?" The old tone was
back now, the old look in her eyes.
"Take that as confidential, please," he spoke almost
sternly, "that much at least I have a right to claim
from you."
"You have no right to claim anything!" she retorted
hotly.
"Oh, yes, I have. That much of loyalty." And his
tone shamed her.
Sh'e put out her hand swiftly. "I wish I could feel
differently. I think I haven't a heart—just a sort of
onlooker's interest in life . . . but I do honestly hope
you'll succeed in clearing yourself. Not just because of


188 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
what I think of you, but for”—she faltered under his
steady gaze—“for humanity's sake,” she finished almost
shamefacedly. And she watched him go with a sudden
feeling of ridiculously illogical remorse. Supposing he
did—could-clear himself absolutely, which both knew
could only be done by bringing the guilt home to an-
other—how she would feel! How small, how mean, how
shriveled of heart.
She was still standing there, lost in thought, when
Moy came back from his talk with Mrs. Appleton, and
was still standing there when Mrs. Appleton herself
was shown in. The butler thought that Moy was in the
library. Even in her mood of intense preoccupation
Alfreda noticed the look on the other woman's face, and
in her eyes, a look of blank despair, of utter misery.
It startled her. Coming just after her talk with Gil-
mour and his words, it seemed to open a vista to her of
something which might be in his mind ... but surely
she, Alfreda, could not be wrong in what she had
hitherto called her intuition about the identity of the
real criminal in this case?
Mrs. Appleton barely nodded to her. She wanted a
word with Mr. Moy, she said, very urgently. Moy
hurried in to the little parlor where she stood nervously
playing with her gloves. She refused a chair. She
wanted, she said, to see him about her brother's will.
“I want you to arrange for endowing scholarships
at Pembroke that was his college, and he loved it,
and perhaps a couple of scholarships at his old school,
Clifton, if the money will run to it. I want everything
that remains, after putting aside all that may be neces-
sary to safeguard Mr. Gilmour, to be used in one of


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 189
hese two ways or both. I don't want my brother's
noney. I know he really would have liked to do this
limself, and only left me the money because he thought
[ might need it. I don't."
Moy looked at her in surprise. What a whirlwind
*ra.y of doing things people seemed to be developing just
lately.
"But what about Appleton?" Moy explained to her
that, owing to the terms of her marriage settlements,
she would have to have her husband's consent to any
such proposal. "Not that there's any hurry," he said
pleasantly, "you've no idea how long it takes to wind
up an estate. And you've got to allow in your mind for
the death duties, which will take about . . ."
He was prepared to go into detail, but she did not
want to listen.
"I'm not interested, you see, in his estate," she said
finally, "having no need of it"
"But the children?" Moy knew that only Ingram's
help had sent the two boys to the preparatory school
at which they were just started.
"They won't need it either," she said resolutely with
a twisted smile that left him a little alarmed for her
sanity. And then she said a word about doing his utmost
to help Gilmour clear himself, no matter where the trail
might lead. Again she looked at him, and again Moy
felt a little shiver at the look in her eyes. If ever a
woman looked as though her sanity were rocking, Mrs.
Appleton did. She left him after he had agreed to do
as she wished, by which he meant to mark time until her
nerves were in better trim. It was all very well to help
Gilmour, he reflected with a smile almost as twisted as


190 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Mrs. Appleton's, but Gilmour was intending to help
himself, and that by taking a step which, in Moj's
judgment, meant disaster immediate and absolute.
As a matter of fact, he was wrong.
Gilmour's method of escape, as he called it, was sim-
plicity itself, and like many simple things, it worked
He went to his club, and took a room for two nights
there, telling the chief inspector where he was going.
Quite unnecessary this last, as both men knew. Thei
he went to bed and slept for the first night since the
death of Ingram. Next morning at half-past six, a red-
haired, shock-headed man in his shirt sleeves and wear-
ing a green baize apron came down the steps swinging
a brown paper parcel in one hand. Under his arm was a
broom. The club was on the corner—he lit a gasper
and walked round it, still dangling his parcel by its
string. It was obviously a suit of clothes for the press-
ers. The watcher continued to keep an eye on the build-
ing as instructed. It was a languid eye, for the room
had been taken for two nights, and nothing about
Gilmour at The Tall House had suggested a passion-
ately early riser. Once well around the corner, Gilmour
took off his green baize apron and took out of the
paper parcel a coat, rather a threadbare affair, which
he now carried on his arm, leaving broom and baize
apron around yet another bend. Down a street he
hurried, and turning off it again, added a cap to his
outfit, and arrived at that street's end looking like any
of a thousand breadwinners walking to his job. He had
paid a royal tip to the man to get apron and broom, a
tip and a hint as to a most excruciatingly good joke to
be played, and a bet to be won, through their means.


192 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
certain watcher was even now sadly making for i
provincial town where detection might be simpler an:'
demand less keen wits. For the moment, there was no
possibility of laying hands on Gilmour, and Pointer
therefore dismissed him from his, mind. He had mam
things to see to this morning. There was his to him—
engrossing hunt for a missing person who should fulfii
the few stipulations that he had laid down. Town seemed
to be half-empty, judging by the accounts that had
already come in of people who were no longer seen in
their accustomed places. Pointer flung most of them
into the discard as soon as he glanced at them, but
there were a few which he reserved for inquiries.
As for the party at The Tall House, it had broken
up with a vengeance yesterday. Mrs. Pratt and Winnie
were in a Dover Street hotel. Later on it was under-
stood that the mother had accepted an invitation for
both of them on Haliburton's yacht. Haliburton him-
self had left his usual club and home addresses with the
police, but at this time of the year he generally spent
a fortnight anonymously with one of his boys' camps
at the seaside, acting, it was said, merely as a friendly
scoutmaster, and hiding the fact of his being the pro-
vider of the camp from all but a few of the men help-
ing him.
Mrs. Appleton was leaving as soon as possible for
Capetown, where she had friends. Appleton would not
be able to go with her, he had explained, but as he too
needed a change, he was going over to Paris almost at
once.
Tark had told the police that he was off for his home
in Beausoleil and was likewise leaving today. Miss


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 193
Longstaff had left The Tall House last night, giving
an address near Hammersmith Broadway, where she
had taken a room. She had no intention of leaving
England.
Frederick Ingram had left last night by 'plane for
Paris, and already Pointer knew that he had gone on
at daybreak to Marseilles. The south of France is not
often chosen in midsummer, especially by as poor a
sailor as Pointer had learned that Frederick Ingram
was, unless there is some strong attraction. In his case,
since he still seemed devoted to Winnie Pratt, Pointer
fancied that it was the green of the tables rather than
of the waves that drew him. The chief inspector would
have to see for himself if this were so or not, and also
why Tark seemed to have such a sudden attack of home
sickness just now. He had a word with the assistant
commissioner before leaving.
"You think the case can breathe by itself, that you
won't have to stay to apply artificial respiration?"
Pelham asked him.
Pointer said that there was no reason why he should
not absent himself for a short time, especially as all
the wheels would turn just as well without him as with
him.
The other shook his head. "Too modest, Pointer.
Fatal flaw in an otherwise sensible man. However, per-
haps you'll give me just a notion of what your merry
men will be at?"
"Overcoming an osmotic reluctance to seeping
through the cilia, sir," Pointer said gravely. One of
the superintendents came in at that moment, and stared
at him with a dropped jaw. Pelham burst out laughing,


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 197
was in your brother's possession at the time of his
death. How did it come into your hands?"
Pointer spoke with such an air of certainty that no
one, not even the assistant commissioner, let alone
rattled Frederick Ingram, would have known that he
was guessing.
Frederick Ingram turned blue.
"You mean that you think Gilmour shot him inten-
tionally?" he asked, his eyes round and staring.
"That's just what you've maintained all along, isn't
it?" Pointer asked.
"But I didn't really believe it!" burst out Fred, his
face still shiny and streaked with red from his play in
the hot rooms. "I didn't really think it!" he repeated.
Pointer, looking at him, thought that excitement had
broken down the barriers of self-control as far as speech
was concerned. It can act as insidiously as scopolamin
on some natures.
"It's quite possible that someone intentionally
changed a loaded for a blank cartridge in his little auto-
matic," Pointer said slowly, "someone who wanted
something that Ingram refused to hand him over."
Frederick's eyes only looked excited, he said nothing.
"Come," Pointer went on pleasantly, "leaving that
on one side, suppose you tell me exactly how this paper
came into your possession. And when."
"I've lots of my brother's papers, of course—and
books. This was among some he handed to me a few
days ago."
"You place yourself in a dangerous position,"
Pointer went on very seriously, "unless you can estab-


198
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
lish the fact that it was found by someone else or
that someone else was present when you found it.”
Frederick seemed to think that very likely.
“As a matter of fact, Miss Pratt and I were looking
through Charles' books at my flat the afternoon of the
day when he was shot. I knew that such a paper existed.
She didn't. She dropped in to find something-any-
thing—that would prove that those cartridges of Gil-
mour's were all blanks. The receipt from his gunsmiths
was really in her mind, I think. But from the first book
that she picked up, by the merest chance, out fluttered
this. She didn't know what it was, of course, and I
picked it up and put it back until she had gone, but I
knew that my brother had devised what he believed to
be a unique system of winning at roulette. He was
certain that it was so perfect that any casino would
purchase it, if tried out at their tables.” Here Fred
Ingram gave a bitter laugh. “I thought he couldn't be
mistaken, but, my hat!” Again he gave a laugh that
was half a groan. “Fortunately, I tried it quietly, or I
should be in queer street. It's an absolute wash-out. I
thought I must have made some mistake in copying it
out, but not a bit of it! Besides, I knew I hadn't !”
Pointer was looking at the paper which he had just
taken from him. At the top was written: System for
Winning at Roulette. The letters were Ingram's, and
yet ... the figures were his, and yet ...
Pointer himself could copy any writing with a sort
of mechanical accuracy, such as had been at work here.
But there is much more than that in a good forgery.
Quite apart from the silly notion that forgery is always
done slowly, for only a half-wit copies swift writing


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
199
without at least equal speed, there is something that
cannot be put down on paper and yet which must be
imitated. A something much more subtle than accuracy
of angle or length of stroke. The more Pointer looked
at the sheet before him, looked at it as a whole, not into
its details, the less did it convey the peculiarly firm,
settled, orderly, almost sedate mind that the other writ-
ing of the dead man had done. He thought it highly
probable that what he held in his hand was a forgery.
Another incidental confirmation was the fact that, as
far as he had yet seen, Ingram always wrote with an
ordinary pen, this was a similar nib to his, but had
been written with a fountain-pen. One thing was certain,
this system, as he had seen, was calculated to ruin
anyone who staked high on it. Had Ingram intended
this? Had he reason to suspect that his life was in
danger? ... Could this system be linked with those
quarterly thousand pound increases in his capital? Had
he sold the original system for a quarterly pension?
This was a new possibility. But there was a more im-
mediate one. Was Frederick Ingram by playing it, try-
ing to place a shield between himself and any suspicion ?
Say he had the real thing, and was only pretending
that he had been taken in by a worthless dud? Who
better than he would know Ingram's writing? Who
could easier place a paper where he wanted it found.
Was it likely that Ingram the careful would have left
such a paper lying in a book?
He questioned Frederick cautiously on this last
doubt. Frederick could not but acknowledge the singu-
larity of the place where the so-called system had been
found. But he suggested that, as it had been devised


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 201
x hundred with me with which to break the bank, a lot
Df it still remains, thanks to my luck last night, which
I thought was the system. And thanks to that unex-
pected wind of caution that suddenly blew on me when
I sat down at the tables."
The baccarat room at Cannes is a noble hall. Vaulted
ceilings, beneath which crystal chandeliers glitter like
hanging baskets of diamonds, luxurious chairs for those
who wish to sit on a central dais and watch the scene,
while sipping cocktails or black coffee.
Two long rows of baize-covered tables at some of
which people were standing three deep already. This is
the Court of Midas. There was silence in the big hall.
Only the clack of chips and the sound of the croupier's
flat wooden rake as he called his "Banco. Mesdames,
messieurs, marquez vos jeux. Rien ne va plus." Fred-
erick passed on to the next room, where the stakes
were still higher. Here he bought some brown thousand-
franc chips, others were playing with oblong blue chips
worth ten times his, and many with white ovals which
represented a hundred times his stakes. It was late.
The hour of the real gamblers. The air of the room was
tense in here. Within a few minutes it was tenser still.
And when an hour was over Frederick Ingram was the
richer by the equivalent of ten million francs, roughly
eighty thousand pounds.
Pointer meanwhile had had another word with the
chief of the Casino detectives. Could a man have a
system at baccarat or chemin de fer? Impossible, the
- chief thought, as did Pointer. But they were puzzled.
It is held not to be possible for a man to win at baccarat
"except by sheer luck, any more than he could cheat at
i'


202 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
that nimble gamble which may run to thousands of
pounds on the draw of the all-important third card.
The doubts of the two were soon answered. When
another hour had passed Frederick was the poorer h
some seventy-nine thousand eight hundred pounds
Finally he made way for another player, his face all
streaked with the curious red that gambling brings out
on a pale face. His voice shook a little as he drew s
deep breath outside. "Well, Fm still my journey oir
and back in hand, and the hundred pounds with which I
started." He turned in at his hotel. Pointer who wa*
staying there too, asked him to his room. He did no;
think the paper a shield any longer. After his first rue
of luck at baccarat, Frederick would only have had to
return to the roulette table and try the real system,
if he had it, claiming that his luck was still holding.
But he had left the Casino with no effort to get back
again the ephemeral fortune which had been his.
Pointer left his own door unlocked, making an ex-
cuse to pop out and speak to Frederick as the latter
was leaving, so as to make him aware of this, just as
he had placed the paper taken from him on the mantel
while he was still in the room.
No attempt was made on room, or paper, during
what remained of the night. If Frederick really left
Cannes in the morning, Pointer felt that he would have
gone far to substantiate his story. Frederick did, re-
peating that, after all, he had had a change of air.
and would be back home not a penny the worse, anc
with the charming memory of having been worth eighty
thousand pounds for over half an hour.
Pointer stepped up into his compartment, which he


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 203
had to himself. There was still five full minutes before
the train was timed to start.
"Look here, Mr. Ingram, did you ever speak of your
brother's system to anyone?"
Frederick seemed to think back.
"I may have," he said, looking up. "It's the sort
of thing one's apt to mention."
"I very much want the names of anyone who knew
of it, as well as you."
"Well, of course my sister and her husband know.
Charles spoke about it once, before the three of us.
Then, well, I think I once told Mrs. Pratt about
it, not that she was interested ... I think Miss Long-
staff knew, too, whether from me or not, I can't say.
Haliburton? No, he didn't know. Gilmour? I fancy he
must have known, but I couldn't say for certain. You
see, Charles never referred to it after the one week
during which he worked it out."
Pointer saw him off, went back to his own room, and
took out the paper again. He had brought with him
several letters of Ingram's to Moy. He compared them
all. Yes, he felt sure—though experts could be asked
to pronounce on it if it should ever be necessary—that
this paper was a forgery. It was empty of all signifi-
cance, and Ingram's writing had plenty of personality.
Who could have forged the paper, if it was a forgery,
as he assumed it to be? Someone who wanted to stop
Frederick's search? Therefore someone who knew both
of that hunt's purpose and of the existence of such a
paper among Ingram's effects? Someone had searched
the bureau before Pointer first saw it. Mrs. Appleton
had hunted for what might well have been just such a


204 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
half-sheet as this . . . Appleton had been with Ingram
on the night that he died . . .
One thing the chief inspector expected, and that was,
that if someone had intentionally forged a system, the
original was in his possession, for there had been no
interest of late in Ingram's papers. Gilmour had never
shown any. Nor had Haliburton. Nor had Moy, except
for those papers with which, as a solicitor, he was ex-
pected to deal. Moreover, if the room had been searched
after the murder, and the body was discovered, then
Moy, Haliburton and Gilmour could all give each other
alibis.
He could make a guess as to where that system was
now. Before the day was over, he knew that his guess
was being strengthened.


FIFTEEN
Appleton had crossed by the noon boat from Victoria,
and gone on down to Mentone by air. That meant that
he would have arrived last night. Pointer rang up the
town police, and learned that rooms had been engaged
for Ingram's brother-in-law at a comfortable but
highly-expensive hotel there. He drove on out to it,
along the beautiful Grand Corniche. The colors of sea
and sky, the turns and twists of the road, are things
of real loveliness. Mentone itself looked the usual arid
desert of a Riviera town in the summer. And indeed,
even in the winter its flowers and verdure are the result
of money and art, not nature. Nature refuses to let even
vegetables grow here, nor any fruit but the olive. In
winter, when the mimosa and the heliotropes run from
end to end of the main street, Mentone has its visitors
who love its sunshine and its flowers, but in summer,
like Beausoleil, it is merely a respectable name for
Monte Carlo from which it is separated by but some
ten minutes in the tram.
Pointer drew up at the handsome Palace Hotel. There
is no fault to be found with the big hotels of the
205


208 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
morrow the money won would be sure to return to the
Casino, probably with interest. Yes, the bank had been
broken twice, which, as Pointer knew, only meant that
that particular table had run out of its reserves of
money. The usual farce of draping it in black, and send-
ing for more money, which was brought in by a guard
was gone through. It was a good advertisement. The
head croupier shrugged. And in these days, parbleu,
one needed advertisement.
Pointer put on his war paint that evening, and pre-
sented himself at the glittering palace of pleasure on
the rocks which at night seemed built all of moon-
beams and dewdrops and ivory. Lit up inside as
superbly as outside, thronged with gorgeous flunkeys,
it is still a spectacle to be seen, though the days of
incredible toilettes are gone and makeshift evening
frocks on very dowdy looking bodies abounded. There
are seven hundred rooms in the huge building, though
quite a quarter of these are secret little cupboards
where, through artfully concealed openings, members
of the brigade de jeu—the Casino's private detective
force—can watch all that goes on.
One of these was put at Pointer's disposal. Inside he
seemed to be separated from the roulette tables by a
mere white grating. From the gaming room itself,
nothing showed but rich panelled walls of stucco and
plaster wreaths and flowers in very high relief. It was
skilfully done. Pointer watched the garish scene. Apple-
ton came in rather early. His step was jaunty, his head
thrown back, his shoulders well squared. He had all
the effect of a man with flowing evening-cloak and hat
well on the side of his head. He sat down in a chair


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 209
with almost a bang, and produced a note-book with
something of a conjuror's flourish. Then he began to
play. Tark was not far behind him, wooden faced, quiet,
but as he looked around him Pointer realized that he
was looking at a man whose only avenue of life was
gambling. Only here, in scenes like this, did Tark really
exist. He seemed to belong to the tables as some men
belong to the fields, some to the towns, and some,
Pointer among them, to the open spaces. Watching the
two men, Pointer felt sure that they were not acting
together. On the contrary, he had an idea from some-
thing that flitted across Appleton's face once or twice
when he staked and lost, that he was amused. Tark
was not. As a rule Appleton won, and Tark, following
him, won too, but once when Appleton staked the
maximum in the maximum ways, and Tark had fol-
lowed suit, Appleton at the last fraction of a second
altered his stake. Tark looked black murder down at
the other's well-groomed head. His eyes for once showed
his feelings. That time Appleton smiled openly. A swift
grin of intense amusement. Watching him make his
entries and calculations, Pointer saw that Appleton
knew beforehand when he was going to lose. He had
a chart by which he was steering. Tark knew it too,
and all but showed his teeth each time that he, follow-
ing, was led astray—deliberately astray. But outwardly
there was no communication between the two players.
Again the bank was broken. Again the usual ritual
followed of draping the table in crape, of bringing in
great boxes of bundles of notes. The head croupier
hovered about, but no one was much interested except
those who were following Appleton. Pointer kept a


210 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
careful tally of the man's winnings. In all he put them
at around fifteen hundred pounds when he finally rose
and let another have his seat. Tark stayed for a couple
of chances, and lost, then he too went down to the
station. Appleton was already in a compartment,
Pointer bundled himself in, bearded and muffled and
bespectacled. He drew out some Russian papers and
seemed to lose himself in them as he took the farthest
corner from Appleton. At the last second Tark jumped
in, stumbled over a pair of elastic-sided boots thrust
out, and apologized curtly. Pointer shrieked something
in Russian, and nursed his toe, spluttering that he did
not understand when Tark tossed him another negli-
gent apology. Then he buried himself in his newspaper
again.
"How much was it?" Tark asked, "we may as well
divide up now. Tolstoi over there doesn't matter."
"Just over fifteen hundred of our money," Apple-
ton replied, looking as though the words hurt him.
Tark gave a grunt of acquiescence. Evidently he too
had made it that.
"Why did you stop playing?" he asked in a tone as
though he had a right to an answer.
"Better so," was the reply. "Arouses less comment.
Less risk of articles in the papers. Well, here's your
half." And may it choke you was suggested by his
voice as he handed over a thick wad of notes which
Tark went through carefully, before stowing them
away in an inner pocket with the briefest of acknowl-
edgments.
"You led me up the garden now and again," he
grumbled as he did so.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 211
"I told you I would!" was the retort, and Appleton
took up a paper and seemed to forget his companion.
The next evening Appleton did not play quite so long.
But he again won over a thousand pounds. The fourth
evening he won over two thousand, and this time the
head croupier had himself taken the table after Apple-
ton began to play. The man's eyes never left Appleton
or Tark. Suddenly Pointer caught sight of Mrs. Apple-
ton in the thick crowd around the table. He knew that
she had left for Paris. That there she had taken a ticket
to Mentone. Pointer, therefore, expected to see her here
tonight. She stood, a pale tired-looking woman where
she could watch her husband's play, and not even the
head croupier followed it more intently. Pointer had
arranged with a member of the brigade de jeu to take
his place if need be, and now he slipped out and drove
back to Appleton's hotel in Mentone. He himself was
staying at Monte Carlo. He wanted a certain corner
in Appleton's little suite, one of the usual hotel arrange-
ments, where a sofa was backed across the angle of
two walls by a four-fold screen. For he had promptly
inspected the rooms with the aid of a card from the
Monte Carlo head detective, since showing which, he
was allowed to do what he liked in Appleton's rooms.
Just now, this was to insinuate a chair into one of the
two bays made by the screen, draw it around him again,
and wait. He might have an all night's vigil, but he
thought not. There was that in Mrs. Appleton's face
which would need privacy, he thought, to be spoken.
What happened at the Casino after he left, he learned
later. Mrs. Appleton got near enough to her husband
to touch him on the shoulder. He looked up, and smiled


212 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
a pale sort of greeting—very forced, very surprised
apparently at sight of her. She only stared down at
him with unsmiling eyes.
She bent forward as though to say something and
Appleton rose at once. "Not here! Come with me to
my hotel. I'll take the tram since you're always fright-
ened of taxis abroad." He got up and lead the waj
out, those around smiling at what they fancied was
the meek husband detected by his puritanical wife.;
"She'll be all right when she hears that he has won T;
one man said cynically as he slipped into the vacated
chair.
Tark, as Appleton afterwards learned, took a taxi
to the Appleton's hotel, asked for him, was told that
he was at Monte Carlo, showed a card of Appleton's
on which was scribbled in what certainly looked like
Appleton's writing, "Permit the bearer to wait for me
in my room," showed it to the floor waiter, and had the
suite unlocked for him at once.,
Tark gave but a glance around the apartment.
Pointer knew what was coming. Straight towards his
screen refuge came Tark. Fortunately Pointer had
taken the farther bay, just on some such off-chance
as this. Tark drew out the sofa, slipped into hiding,
and was just moving back the end of the screen against
the wall on his side when the creak of the lift and steps
sounded outside. He left the sofa's end where it was.
But the two people who entered together had no eye
for the position of the furniture. Had the men hidden
in the corner stood out in the middle of the room, they
might have escaped notice.


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 215
solicitors tell me that I can't force them to do so. Yet
they talk of our Justice and our Law! We haven't a
penny except the three hundred in the bank that I
always keep for emergencies, and your two hundred
which you have there for the same reason. Got that
clear?"
"I don't care for your reasons—I don't want to hear
them." She almost moaned the words. "I don't want
to know the steps which led you down to Hell. But you
did go down them. And you shall never touch the
children or me again. Never. Nor shall you profit by
your crime. Keep if you want to—" her lip curled—
"the blood money you've won up to now. But enter a
gaming place again, and let me hear of it, and you'll
hang!"
"Will you listen!" roared Appleton, and by sheer
volume of sound silenced her. "I was told, perhaps
worry aggravated it, that I've got to have a major
operation, yes, that old tumor again, within six months.
The fees will run into a thousand pounds with Sir
Rankin Rowbottom as surgeon, and he's the only man
who can do it and give me a chance of surviving. Well,
I caught Charles just as he was on his way back to
The Tall House. Earlier in the evening he had told me
that he wouldn't have a moment's time until midnight.
There was something he had to finish and get off by
twelve, to catch the midnight post. Well, I walked
about, wondering how best to put it to him, wondering
what would happen to you and the kids if he wouldn't
let me have a try at that system. You see, no loan
would help. It would have to be that system of his, or
we were all beggars for the rest of our lives, though


216 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
in my case the rest would only be a couple of years,
but they would be years of increasing agony. I went
home once, thinking I would try again next morning
But I didn't come in. I turned around with my key in
the door and went back."
"I heard you," she said in a whisper. "I heard
your step—your key—and your going away again."
"I caught a bus and by chance spied Charles jus:
turning a corner close to that furnished house. I joinei
him, and we went back into the library there and had a
long talk. I told him everything. I didn't want a loan.
I wanted that system. In the end he handed it to me.
I swear by God, I swear by Jacky and Bill, and mj
love for you, Ada, that I'm telling you the exact truth.
He saw what an awful place we were all in. He got up,
unlocked a despatch box beside him, took out an en-
velope from the bottom, and handed it me. 'There you
are. You've won—and you'll go on winning,' were his
exact words. Then he added, 'I didn't think I could
reconcile it with my conscience to hand that to any
man, let alone to Ada's husband, but I give it you on
one condition.' He made me give him my word of honor
that if a casino offered to buy me off—as he said thev
certainly would—I would accept their offer, provided
it was a reasonable one. He thought that Monte Carlo
would offer me an annuity of two thousand a year for
it. And the other big places even more. I had to promise
that, and I did so gladly. Well, I went home as happy
as a boy. I know what you felt about gambling-money,
so I decided—Charles and I had decided that together
—to say nothing about it . . . Then came the news


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 217
of his dreadful end. I saw that you didn't think it an
accident. I saw that you suspected me"
"For the last month, Edward, you've talked in your
sleep of getting that system. Over and over you would
mutter that 'I must have it. He must give it me. It'll
save us. I've a right to it . . .' " She panted the words
rather than spoke them.
"I didn't kill Charles, but I was—afraid—of you—
of the police—of the whole position. Then Tark accused
me of murdering him for that paper. He offered to
keep silence for a half share in all profits. It's my be-
lief that if anyone murdered Charles, if it wasn't an
accident, then it was Tark, before he knew that Charles
had already given the system away. He guessed to
whom then, because we had talked it over together.
Oh,.I knew Tark by sight as well as he knew me. You
can't live at the Casino rooms as both of us did, with-
out knowing one another perfectly by sight. But it was
from Fred that he learned about the system. So he
says."
"But you were the two who plotted to get hold of
it," she said fiercely, accusingly.
"We talked of how to get it—of course we did. Once
we knew of its existence. And as you know I thought
he might give me a chance. . . . Charles was so afraid
I would turn into a desperate gambler. ... I didn't
think he'd care so much whether Tark did or not. The
chap only lives for gambling anyway . . . When he
saw his chance of pretending to me that he thought I
had shot Charles, I gave in . . . there was nothing else
for it. . . . And now, I swear again, Ada, that I've


218 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
told you the exact truth. Look at me, look into my
face, my darling. Surely you can read the truth there/
She fixed a haggard, intent stare on him, she half,
stretched out one hand, the other now tight presseC
against her heart.
"Oh Edward, if only I could! I might, if you'll de-
stroy—at once—that awful paper"
Tark came out from behind his end of the screen.
Mrs. Appleton gave a little cry. Appleton seemed toe
amazed even to gasp.
"Didn't know I was here, did you?" Tark said in
his harsh, level voice. "Mrs. Appleton, I can't stand
silent and see such a lie pass. Your intuition or sus-
picion was right. He shot your brother. I happened to
see him at The Tall House, but until afterwards I didn't
reflect just what it was he was at. No, Appleton, it's
no use. I won't stand for it. You know that you shot
Ingram, and unless you hand me his system—the
right one, mind you—not the one we spoofed off Fred
with, I shall go myself to the police. If you think it's
worth while swinging for, keep it!" And Tark seated
himself on the arm of a chair.
"How dare you repeat your lying accusation to me
in front of my wife!" Appleton looked the outraged
husband to the life.
Tark gave one of his short hard cackles. "Mrs.
Appleton will be called as a witness against you, unless
you're careful. I agree with her that it's a foul thing to
kill her brother and use that money. Hand it over to
me. I wanted to buy it from Ingram, as you know, not
to murder him for it. You said that you thought you
could get it without paying for it, if I'd put up five


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 219
hundred to try it out with. Well, I got the money, and
you got the system." His last words were full of mean-
ing. "And now, hand me over that paper," he went on,
his words suddenly cold and steel hard.
"Don't let him have it!" came from Mrs. Appleton.
Her eyes were alight. She was quite undaunted now.
"Never mind what happens. Burn it!"
"I haven't got it with me, Ada." He ignored Tark.
Something in his face and eye suggested that there was
no Tark, that it only lay between himself and his wife.
His hand went to an inner pocket. . . .
"You've got the copy," came Tark's hard voice. "I
want that copy. Hand it over! Dare to go near those
matches "His body seemed to thicken, he was ready
for a spring when Pointer stepped out from the re-
maining pocket of the screen. It was purest vaudeville,
but no one in the room smiled. Pointer counted roughly
on the surprise of his sudden appearance giving him
just time to snatch a paper from Appleton's fingers.
The man, with an ashen face, made a clutch at his
hand.
"How dare you! You have no right whatever to be
here ... to take that. It's mine. Return it at once,
or . . ." He choked.
"Or what?" Pointer asked coldly.
"Keep ft!" Mrs. Appleton said suddenly, and her
face looked younger and, in sogie deep way happier,
fehan Pointer had yet seen it. "Keep it, chief inspector.
My husband told us the truth as to how he got it. It
is honestly his. Keep it for the time being. I lend it
you—he lends it you on condition that you clear up
my brother's murder, if it was one!"


220 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
"Bring it home to your husband!" sneered Tark.
His eyes showed a curious red. Rather strange eyes
had Tark. He looked a man most eminently capable of
murder as he stood there, his thin small lips stretched
away from his teeth in a sort of snarl.
Pointer turned to Mrs. Appleton. Her eyes, resolute
and unwavering, met his. The two talked without words
in a long look. He saw that she really did believe in
her husband, that she was sure at last of his innocence,
and that she was willing for him to run the terrible
danger of being accused of her brother's murder, if
need be.
But Appleton looked shrunken and withered. She
crossed to him, and stood shoulder to shoulder beside
him.
"Just what did you mean, Mr. Tark, when you said
that you didn't know what he was at, when you saw
him at The Tall House the night on which Mr. Ingram
was shot?" Pointer asked. He dominated the room, as
he usually did any room where he was. Tark shot him
one glance from his calculating eyes that had now
grown cold again, and answered promptly.
"I saw him in Gilmour's room when I went to my
own—around one o'clock at night—doing something
to the drawer by the door, just putting something
back into it to be precise. Putting back the case that
held the automatic with which Ingram was shot a couple
of hours later."
"It's a lie!" burst from Appleton in tones of indig-
nant horror and outraged truth. But the trouble was
that, being a good actor, Appleton could assume that
look and tone at will. Mrs. Appleton turned her head,


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 221
gave her husband one look, and then turned away, her
own face serene and tranquil.
"Is it? I think not!" came Tark's reply. If a liar,
Tark was quite as good an actor as Appleton had ever
been. "It's true. And you know it. And your wife
knows it. Well, you've failed to pull it off. And now,
I think I'll go home."
"What about being arrested as an accessory, Mr.
Tark?" was Pointer's inquiry. "If you conceal infor-
mation in a murder case"
"In a murder case—yes. But this was not openly
that," was the retort. "The coroner's jury brought it
in as Death by Misadventure. How was I to guess the
truth that Appleton was the real murderer?"
"Why else did I go halves with you but because you
blackmailed me into doing it?" Appleton asked indig-
nantly. "I agreed, because I needed the money and at
once, and must at all costs avoid trouble. But make no
mistake. Don't think that if I go to prison I won't take
you with me, and if it comes to the rope—then to the
drop with me." He spoke resolutely. Tark only lit a
cigarette.
"Empty words! You murdered your brother-in-law,
not I. I believed your account of the handing over by
him to you of the system, and only offered to find the
money with which to try it out. Naturally that being
the case, I asked for half shares. I hoped, as I say, that
Ingram would have sold it to me, but he was evidently
not in need of money. You took a simpler and swifter
way of getting what you wanted."
"Why were you hiding in this room?" came from
Appleton.


222 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
"Because I rather thought your wife might want yon
to give up the system. That she knew the truth. Ie
which case, I wanted it."
Pointer interposed. "And now, Mrs. Appleton, and
you two gentlemen, I would like you to return to
England."
Tark stiffened.
"You see," the chief inspector went on, "I particu-
larly want to avoid any scandal, any calling in of the
French police, and that can only be, if you all three
voluntarily return to England, and stay there till
things are clearer."
Tark looked for an instant as though he would
demur but he thought better of it and when asked for
his prospective address gave his former hotel. The
Appletons would return to Markham Square, they said,
and there place themselves unreservedly at the service
of the chief inspector. One of Pointer's men in plain
clothes would accompany them. Inspector Watts was
staying at a quiet hotel ready for just such a duty.
That done, the oddly assembled little group broke up.
Pointer waited until Appleton came back after seeing
his wife off to her hotel. He had a long wait, but he
counted rightly on the fact that Mrs. Appleton was
too worn out to be capable of any further long con-
versations without a rest. At length her husband, look-
ing some ten years older, returned alone and entered
his sitting-room heavily, a night waiter carrying a
tray following him. Pointer expected a protest at his
own presence but on the contrary Appleton looked
relieved. He offered the other a whisky and soda, which


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 223
was refused, and helped himself, drinking as a man does
who needs the stimulant.
"There's something been burning me all the time,"
chief inspector," Appleton began as he set the glass
down. "About my brother-in-law. I tried to give you
a hint that I thought his death wasn't accidental, but I
was reluctant to mention his system. I was afraid that
at the best I should get no chance of playing it, if I
did, and at the worst, well, that what my wife thought
would be your first idea. And one hears so often that
what a detective thinks first he thinks all the time,
that "Appleton shrugged his shoulders and
poured another drink. "There is something that I
knew all along I ought to tell you—it's this. Ingram
had had a fearful shock. He wasn't himself in the
least. Which was one of the reasons why he let me have
that system so easily. He was very pale and ... I
can't give you particulars, but his whole appearance,
as well as manner, suggested a man who was fairly
reeling under some blow.
"Now that had not been the case when I looked in
and wanted a word with him before midnight. Nor was
it the case when I met him on his way back from the
post. Both times he was exactly himself, in looks and
in manner. When we entered he didn't take me into the
library, but into a little room by the door, a room
which Tark and I used to signal to each other from,
by the way—oh, just an arrangement of a signal each
was to make to the other through the window should
either of us have got the system—but to go back to
Charles. . . . He left me there for a moment, saying
that he had a few papers he must see to before our


224
THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
talk, said he wouldn't keep me more than a minute.
... It was quite ten minutes before he came in and
when he did, as I say, he was a changed man. However
he led me into the library, though I think he had to
force himself to take any interest in what I wanted to
say, didn't ask me to have a drink, or a smoke, just
stood by the fire staring at me from a white and rather
ghastly face. But I couldn't afford to put off what I
had to say ... well, the rest I've told you . .. but
even when we parted he looked just the same a man
who had had an awful blow, I thought.”
“You don't think so now?” Pointer asked, in answer
to his tone, rather than his words.
"Oh, I do still. But I'm afraid now that his shock
was connected with what happened so soon afterwards.
Whether he had caught sight of his murderer . . . and
knew he was in danger ... whether he had received
the traditional warning dear to old-fashioned novelists
... something of that sort was the cause of his ap-
pearance and absolute inability to really care for what
I was telling him ..."
“Had anything been burned in the hearth?” Pointer
asked.
“Yes, papers. They were still smoking, but Charles
said that he had burned the draft of the papers he had
just posted, and he was a man who never told a lie.”
“Do you mind telling me how he came to say that
to you? Did you ask him what the papers were?”
“Certainly not.” Appleton looked surprised at the
question.
“Then did he go out of his way to tell you what they


226 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
that, the very fire might cause the writing to show a>
writing—"
"There was no margin," Appleton said slowly. "No,
I recall that now."
"Mr. Ingram left a wide margin on the letters I've
seen of his."
"Always. Yes, that's odd. I've never known him tc
write from edge to edge as was done on that sheet
Yet it was a letter ... I mean there was the usuai
short first line and the usual two very short last lines,
one of conventional closing, and one a signature . .
Appleton was trying to picture again what he had seen
without interest so short a time ago.
"Two lines, not three?" Pointer asked. "For a very
formal, or a business note, would be likely to have three,
including the signature."
"By jove, now you've made me think back so closely.
I don't believe it was Ingram's writing at all," Apple,
ton said without replying to the question just put. "No,
it was all over the page . . . and the signature was
very short. . . . Charles always had a long signature.
His middle name was Augustus and he used it in sign-
ing, so that Charles Augustus Ingram made quite a
little strip of letters on a page. Yet he told me he was
burning the draft of what he had just sent off. . . ."
More than this he had not seen, or could not recall.
Again Pointer took him over each little item. Appleton
changed nothing, and added nothing, except his grow-
ing conviction that the letter flung last of all on the
torn-up scraps of white manuscript paper must have
been a warning of his coming death.
Before returning to his own room Pointer went for


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 227
i long walk. He wanted to think. First of all, there was
.he question as to whether Tark or Appleton could be
;he solution to The Tall House puzzle. Either or both
night be, and yet ... if so, it was a much simpler
affair than he had fancied it. . . . Putting aside all
that had just been told him, for it was told him by a
very suspect man, a man who might easily be the crimi-
nal himself, there was still the posting of that letter or
package of manuscript . . . the last fitted in with the
idea of ciphers. . . . No one had so far acknowledged
the receipt of a communication of any kind from the
dead man, though the coroner had asked the public to
do so. If Appleton's account was to be trusted, the way
his brother-in-law had spoken beforehand about want-
ing to catch the midnight post suggested a man doing
an accustomed thing . . . knowing just what post
would be in time. . . . Here fitted possibly the quar-
terly payments of a thousand pounds, a very large
sum for a man to have without any note as to the serv-
ices paid so liberally.
Judging by his well-known mode of life those services
must have been written ones. Again came the notion of
cipher reading or compilation. But Pointer could not
see why, if so, the police had not been confidentially
informed of the fact . . . some foreign power? Some
distant business house? But if Ingram was earning four
thousand a year, his services must be important; his
death, published in the papers, must have been wire-
lessed or cabled, whether in one of his own codes or
not to his employer . . . yet nothing had been heard
in reply. . . .
Well, much would depend on that search for a miss-


228 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
ing man—or a missing woman—whose disappearana
the chief inspector thought might still be the shortes:
cut to clear up Ingram's murder, supposing it to ha?e
been a murder. As to the system being the motive, that
was quite possible. In fact, but for the posting of some-
thing of which the registration slip was missing, Pointer
would be quite willing to accept it as the motive. Apple
ton assured him that only four people besides its
author knew of the existence of Ingram's system: him-
self, his wife, Fred Ingram and Tark. Appleton was
quite sure of this. He himself had imparted the infor-
mation to the last-named, and Ingram had told them,
when speaking of it, that only they to whom he was
talking knew of such a paper. Yes, the system did pro-
vide an adequate motive. . . . Appleton's account of
the change in Ingram on his return might be connected
with that mysterious person of the post-office robbery.
. . . Appleton had joined Ingram some time after he
had left the neighborhood of the attempt and of the
escape, but Pointer thought there was a simpler ex,
planation of Ingram's state of mind as described by
his brother-in-law. He was going to test this explana-
tion as soon as possible and in doing so a part at least
of Appleton's account.


SIXTEEN
Moy found the silence on Gilmour's part very hard to
bear as one day followed another. He was not what is
known as psychic at all, and yet he had a growing feel-
ing that something was wrong.
Three days after Gilmour had left the letter with
him, he rang up Miss Longstaff and asked her if he
might drop in for a chat. She sounded quite willing.
He found her sitting in a little basement room lit by
what purported to be dungeon lanterns, a suitable
choice he thought.
She was looking tired and dispirited, but the stare
that she bent on him was as inscrutable as ever. She
brightened up, however, after a moment.
"You've never been here before, have you?" she
asked, waving a hand around. "Can you imagine a
more naive attempt at deceit. That bookcase is sup-
posed to be absolutely undetectable. Could anyone sup-
pose it to be anything, but what it is, a bed on end?
The manageress assured me that the wash-stand looks
just like an antique bureau. It doesn't. It looks just
like a wash-stand, from where it was bought—Totten-
229


234 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
rather made me waver. And I've been thinking hard
ever since, and bit by bit I've wondered whether there
—around that woman—might lie the clue to his dis-
appearing so suddenly—she's left here too," she fin-
ished.
"How do you know her name, and that she lived
here?" Moy asked.
"Mr. Gilmour met a friend, and I slipped away as
soon as the lift got to the top, and looked around for
the floating veil. Fortunately it was waiting for a bus
just close to the tube entrance. So I waited too. And
got out where she did. And came here after her, and
took a room here and made her acquaintance. And all
to no result!" She opened dramatic hands at the last
sentence to show the palms empty. "She says she never
heard of Gilmour, refused to recognize his description
when I gave it to her. She swears that her life is entirely
wrapped up in disarmament propaganda."
"Well?" Moy asked again, as she seemed to have
quite finished. She hunched a shoulder. "It's not true,
Mr. Moy. I saw Lawrence Gilmour's eyes fall on her
and I saw the look of real uneasiness come instantly
into his face and the look of relief when we stepped
back and the lift shot away. She wasn't looking in our
direction, but trying to get her purse back into her
handbag. Now that's what's bothering me ... I had
to speak of it. At first, I thought it was connected with
something underhand on his part. Something with which
the death of Mr. Ingram was linked—if only I could
find the link. But just lately—well, I'm feeling a little
uneasy."


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 235
"Where's she now?" Moy asked, jumping up. "I'll
have a word with her if you like."
"No one knows—or at least no one will tell me where
she's gone to," Alfreds said to that. "I found it quite
impossible to become friends with her in the short time
I've been here. She was oddly distrustful of any over-
tures."
Not oddly, wisely, Moy thought, considering the
motives which had actuated at least one maker of
friendly advances. But he did not think Miss Longstaff
had much sense of humor except a sardonic one.
"Perhaps I tried to hurry too much. Anyway she
rather markedly held me at a distance. And then, one
morning, I found her room door standing wide open
and was told that she had gone. As a matter of fact I
had borrowed a book just the day before, because I saw
she was packing, and I wanted her to give me her ad-
dress. But either she forgot about the book, or, as I
now think, she wanted me to think she would let me
know where to send it on, in order to get clear the
easier. They tell me that she's been seen passing the
house, so I have taken to haunting the streets lately
because of a certainty that she knows more than she
acknowledged of Gilmour, and therefore may know
where he is now."
Moy asked if Mrs. Findlay had any other friends in
the house. Miss Longstaff said that, as one would ex-
pect with a very dour-looking, plain, middle-aged body,
she had no other friends whatever. "The manageress
says she has no idea where Mrs. Findlay is. I suppose
she's speaking the truth . . ." Miss Longstaff again
showed that rather worn, dispirited look which she had


238 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
“How do you know he has vanished?” he countered
swiftly.
"Miss Longstaff is beginning to worry too,” she went
on, without answering his question. “She's rung me up
several times lately. I feel I haven't done her justice.
I thought her so frightfully hard, but, of course, if she
doesn't love Mr. Gilmour, perhaps there was a certain
honesty in saying so at once. ... I begin to think
that she didn't care for him ever ... and would have
broken with him anyway. But speaking about him, Mr.
Moy, didn't he leave any message, any address ?” She
was quite a charming sight in the plainly-furnished
room, like a spray of lovely flowers all soft colors and
grace; Moy's heart warmed to her. She was leaning
towards him so that he could see the texture of her
smooth pink and white skin, the sheen on the curls over
her ears. “I believe there's someone who's his enemy,"
she breathed, “and who wants to harm him. Who hoped
to have him arrested for murder, and still wants to
harm him. He shouldn't have gone all alone, where no
one can help him. He may be in some most frightful
danger.”
Moy could not refrain from a little comfort.
“He left an envelope with me that I'm to send on to
the Yard should things go really wrong," he blurted
out.
“How will you know if they are wrong!" she asked
almost accusingly. Moy could only assure her that he
would know, and explained.
“But you ought to have that precious envelope al-
ways with you! Think how awful it would be if he were


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 239
:o need your help and you had to waste time sending
For it."
He assured her that no time would be lost.
Haliburton and Fred Ingram and Tark all came in
together at that. Haliburton said he was sorry to bring
the regiment, but they had all happened to meet and
decided to go on together to one of the non-stop variety
shows which had a really remarkable dancing turn of
"which all the town was talking.
Tark seemed as close-mouthed as ever, except that he
shot Fred Ingram one swift look from expressionless
eyes as he murmured that he had been home for a little
•visit which had done him a world of good.
He added something about being off shortly for
Diamantino. Moy had no idea where that was, but it
sounded as though it would suit Tark. Frederick and he
seemed to eye each other so closely that Moy wondered
whether each had come because the other was there.
Haliburton asked Moy whether he had any news of
Gilmour, and Winnie, turning to the three visitors,
passed on the information just given her before Moy
could stop her. He had not bargained on that.
"He believes now that it was murder, and he's gone
after whoever did it. All by himself. Isn't it splendid,
Basil?"
For the first time since Ingram's death Moy thought
she sounded insincere. Was it possible that Gilmour's
distrust of her was based on some real foundation? A
sort of panic seized Moy at the thought of what his
tongue might have done. Then he reassured himself.
He had not shown anyone the envelope. True, Tark's
eyes and his had met when just a second ago he had


240 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
glanced at his bureau to see that it was locked as usual
But Tark would not connect his, Moy's, swift glanct
with the place where Gilmour's letter was kept. That
letter lay heavily on Moy's mind. So much might dt,
pend on it. Of course, in all probability, it would never
be needed, but . . . his visitors all began to talk at
once. Miss Pratt absolutely insisted on Moy coming to
the show with them. She said he was looking worried.
He had already made his arrangements with the porter
to answer his telephone, and, as always nowadays, left
word with him where he could be at once reached, if
asked for by Mr. Gilmour.
Moy found the entertainment dull. He excused him-
self after the first turn. Tark and Frederick Ingram
had drifted out before it had properly begun. Back
inside the building where his flat was, the porter came
out to meet him as he made for the lift.
"One of your friends left his gloves behind him, sir.
I let him in. They were lying on a chair. That all right?
He said his name was Ingram."
Moy assured him it was and went on up. He remem-
bered noticing Tark's gloves lying in a chair, as that
silent man reached up to try one of the concealed lights
in the dining-room. However, perhaps Frederick had
left his too, at any rate there were no gloves to be seen
now as he looked round his flat.
He felt out of sorts. Miss Pratt's words that Gilmour
might be dead haunted him, try as he would to shake
them off. Where was Gilmour? On what dark trail?
His mind went to Miss Longstaff's odd tale about his
reluctance, or rather his dread, of being in the same lift
with the woman—Mrs. Findlay . . . but was there anv


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 241
ruth in that story? If not, for what purpose had that
istute young woman told him it? Was something about
;o happen which she wished to be able to attribute to
she woman with the floating veil? Or . . . again a sort
:>f chill swept over the young solicitor. Had she stuffed
him with any story just to get him into a confidential
mood, into a frame of mind to exchange his confidence
for her rubbish? His account of the letter left with him
for her account of a mysterious terror on the part of
Gilmour? He went to his bureau, unlocked it and then
the drawer where he kept the precious letter in another
locked box. Yes, it was still there. That awful fear that
had suddenly gripped him was absurd. Slightly com-
forted, but not at all pleased with himself, he returned
to his chair and picked up a book.
The telephone rang. In an instant he had lifted the
receiver. He heard Gilmour's voice, but speaking very,
very quietly, as though anxious not to be overheard,
saying:
"That you, Moy? It's me, Gilmour. Oh, I'm quite all
right, thanks "This in answer to a swift inquiry
on Moy's part. "But listen, don't get worried if I don't
drop in at the Eggs and Bacon tonight as I promised.
I may not be able to get up to town. And as I promised
you to look in and report, I was afraid you might do
something silly if you didn't see me. Cheerio!"
"Righto!" came Moy's eager voice, "that's all
right, old man." He heard the receiver dropped at
the other end on to its hook, and sprang across the
room. He unlocked the bureau with fingers that shook
a little. The signal had come. He pulled out the enve-
lope from its locked box, ran the paper-cutter carefully


242 THE TALL HOttSE MYSTERY
along the edge and drew out—four blank envelopes
Just such envelopes as were in his pigeon-holes always.
He stared at the four, and felt as though his heart had
stopped beating for a second. He had let Gilmour down
He had let him down in what was perhaps his utmost
need, his last extremity. That quiet in Gilmour's voice,
was it fear, was it exhaustion, was it . . .
In a second he had the 'phone in his hand again and
was asking for Chief Inspector Pointer, but Pointer was
not at the Yard. His superintendent, however, took the
urgent message that Moy almost stammered into the
'phone. That official seemed to know all about the case,
and Moy was assured that the telephone call could, and
would, be traced at once, and help, if possible, sent to
the man who might need it so sorely.
Moy walked his room in an agony of horror and self-
abasement. Someone had got in here, picked the locks
protecting that which had been entrusted to him to
guard, that which might mean life or death to the man
who had given it him, and after getting the envelope,
had taken out the precious contents and left him but
the empty shell, as one gives a child a bauble to keep
it quiet. He had only one hope—fingerprints.


SEVENTEEN
Pointer asked to see Mrs. Pratt. He could imagine
quite easily what it was that she had written to Charles
Ingram, the reading of which had so upset him that
his brother-in-law thought that he had received some
sort of warning note, but Pointer wanted facts.
Mrs. Pratt received the chief inspector coldly, with
the look of a woman with whom the past is past, and
who has no intention of being at the beck and call of
Scotland Yard because she happened to have stayed in
the house when a death had occurred.
"Mrs. Pratt," Pointer said, looking thoughtfully at
his hat this time, instead of at his shoes, "I'm afraid
I must ask you for some information which may be
painful to you to give. But it's really important—in
clearing up all the circumstances of Mr. Ingram's
death—to be sure of what was in that letter which you
wrote him. The letter which he burned after reading it
in accordance with your own wishes. You say it was a
rhyme of some kind, but I think that can hardly be this
paper to which I'm referring. This one upset Mr.
Ingram very badly. So badly that I can guess, we can
243


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 245
eugenics. It seems a horrid thing to have done-but-
well, I had very real and dreadfully urgent reasons."
Pointer waited. She had not finished. She was screw-
ing herself up to say more.
"I'm tormented. I don't mind owning to you, and in
strict confidence by an awful thought, chief inspector.
And that is that Mr. Ingram may have wanted to com-
mit suicide and drawn Mr. Gilmour's bullet intention-
ally-after reading my letter.”
Pointer listened very carefully now.
“You see, Mr. Gilmour was a very good shot, as was
Mr. Ingram, I believe. And a good shot when aiming a
dummy cartridge at anyore would aim it true, wouldn't
he? He would shoot straight, thinking it was blank ...
nothing else would be natural. I've been tormenting my-
self with the fear that Mr. Ingram may have reasoned
just like that and-and-after my letter—thought
that life wasn't worth living. Of course I haven't
breathed a word of all this. And I should deny it if it
came out,” she flashed a glance of fire at the detective
officer, “but between ourselves, and since there's still so
much suspicion of poor Mr. Gilmour about, I'm afraid
that's how it may have happened.”
“That Mr. Ingram walked into the revolver, so to
say, as another man might under a train, or a bus ..."
Pointer looked thoughtful.
She nodded. “I'm dreadfully sorry. But it had to be
done.” She spoke as a surgeon might have, after an
operation which has cost the patient his life.
Pointer asked her a few questions, the drift of which
she did not see. They were to find out if she knew, or
could think of, any motive other than the one she had


248 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
the proof-reading which Fred Ingram had done latelj
for his brother, noticed a great falling off in Ingram'! j
output since a little before he went to The Tall House.
Frederick said that his half-brother had spoken of
being very busy on some work which did not need proof- ■
reading. On Frederick expressing surprise, Ingram—
according to the younger man—had said curtly that
it was work for a firm who had all their proof-reading
done by a member of their own staff.
What work would bring in four thousand a year
without spreading the author's name abroad? And
there was no known regular contribution of Charles
Ingram's to account for the income paid him. Pointer
felt that he ought to be able to think through this prob-
lem, as he had so many another. He dearly loved this
part of his work. He stopped at a newspaper stall and,
as so often before in this case, let his eyes and hands
play over all papers spread out. Gardening articles
weren't signed . . . but Ingram was no gardener . . .
besides four thousand a year . . . Racing? Ingram
had never gone to more than a couple of races, and had
no books bearing on the sport of kings. Disconsolately,
but doggedly, he turned the pages of a daily that he
himself never glanced at, except from professional duty.
A large square block caught his eye . . . held his eye
. . . filled his eye ... a crossword puzzle for whose
solution a" thousand pounds was offered. The author's
name was not mentioned. He must be a clever chap,
and possess a mind that was mechanical in a wav, and
yet extremely flexible . . . scholarly . . . mathemati-
cal. . . . Pointer dropped the papers and walked on
deep in thought. Ingram had wanted to catch the mid-


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 249
night post . . . quarter day was a week ago ; the thou-
sand had always been invested shortly after quarter
day, would it again come to hand now that he was dead?
It should have done so by now. Two days after quarter
day had seen Ingram investing that thousand for the
last five years. Could he test the possibility that Ingram
was a crossword writer in any way? He himself did not
go in for that amusement, but Chief Inspector Franklin
did. He was known for his love of them. Pointer de-
cided to go to his rooms at the Yard as soon as he had
seen if there was anything important waiting for him-
self. But he found his superintendent with the telephone
in one hand and two constables taking down notes in
front of him.
"Gilmour left a message to be sent to you should he
find himself in danger." The superintendent rapped out
the news just received from the stricken Moy.
"The 'phone call has been traced. It came from a
public telephone booth in Brixton. I sent Inspector
Watts there at once with Evans and Ridgewell." The
superintendent left the other to carry on.
Within half an hour Watts was telephoning from the
box in question. There had been so many robberies from
these public telephone boxes lately that a watch had
been kept on them. None of the users had in the least
resembled Gilmour. But Pointer had not thought they
would.
Pointer set all wheels in motion, and then drove round
to Moy's flat. He found him almost beside himself with
worry.
"This envelope—I slit it at the top—but it still bears
Gilmour's seal—his ring, you know—just as it did


EIGHTEEN
His colleague, Chief Inspector Franklin, had not yet
come in, and Pointer had to work alone, sorting out on
one side those Crosswords whose clues seemed to him
of the kind to he written by such a man as Ingram, to
be worth such a salary as Pointer believed might have
been paid him for their composition.
Then he took these selected ones, discarded for the
moment those with no money prizes attached, though
he was not so sure of this being necessary, and concen-
trated on what remained. The fourth paper which he
studied suddenly made his eyes sparkle. He was look-
ing at the answers to the last week's puzzle, reading
them along with the clues re-printed beside them. The
first clue had read:
"Was called an idol, and whether one or not, con-
tributed to the loss of an order." The solution was
Baphomet.
A pamphlet rose before Pointer's mind, a nearly-
finished article on the little copper image of a man with
a beard and a crown found in every Chapter of the
Knights Templar when their Order was broken up.
263


256 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
We mean to capture that prize yet between the lot of
us. But about the writer—he's one person. Has been
for at least the last five years. He's distinctly a gen-
tleman. A Cambridge, not an Oxford man. No great
cricketer or footballer. Fond of tennis and fair at
golf. Possibly a rowing man; we differed on that. No
knowledge of animals. Traveled very little, if any. Well
up in science. Personally I think he's a clergyman, but
the others decided he was a schoolmaster, probably
science master at some public school. He's unmarried.
Post-war, of course. Rather young, I think. They say
early middle age. Fond of John Masefield. Staunch
Conservative. Member of at least one good London
club. Lives out of town. Fair knowledge of flowers but
hardly enough for a really good gardener. No good at
music. Fond of a good play with a weakness for Ibsen.
Loathes Strindberg. A first-class knowledge of chess.
And one of the men of our Crosswords Club, a very
brainy chap, says he's an authority on the Knights
Templar or at least on their Order. I don't quite follow
him there . . . but it's possible. There, that's the out-
come of five years' close study—very close study."
"I'm told that Lord Bulstrode writes these cross-
words himself," Pointer said innocently.
"Rot!" was the reply. "You mean that he wants it
thought he writes them. That's true enough. So keep
my opinion and that of the club to yourself. But what
have crosswords to do with your murder?"
"Have you had any clues lately that Hell or Light
or Claire would fit?" Pointer asked.
"Claire!" Franklin said in a tone of anguish. "Claire!
I never thought of that. Well, it's not too late yet


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 259
The week before that, there had been no winner. The
week before that, it had been a parson . . . Pointer
had his constable clerk write down all this year's win-
ners. Meanwhile he picked up the telephone, and again
talked to his friend of the news agency. How did peo-
ple receive their money, if they won one of the Weekly
Universe three-thousand-pound prizes?
He was told that if living in England, the winner
had to apply in person at the Weekly Universe's office.
If they lived in some impossible place, Bulolo for in-
stance, the check would be paid into their account on
receipt of a duplicate of the coupon sent in showing
the claimant's writing and with a photograph of him-
self attached. The paper wanted advertisement, of
course, and tried to interest the local press in the
matter. As far as his informer could say, the prize had
only once been won by a man outside the British Isles,
and that had been a Remittance man who had died of
drink two days before his check was sent him.
Pointer said he wanted information about the last
four winners of this particular prize. He wanted some
bright intellect sent along to secure it, while he himself
made his swift way to the room of the Competition
Editor of the Weekly Universe, whose name the agency
gave him as Henry Orlebar. As he walked around to
the huge white building only a stone's throw from the
Yard, he remembered that Lord Bulstrode had got his
barony for his financial aid to the Conservative party,
that Ingram had done well when he stood as Conserva-
tive candidate for his university town, lowering the
Liberal majority handsomely. That Bulstrode and
Ingram were both members of the Junior Carlton


260 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
Club, of which Haliburton was a member too. Could the
link be political as well, supposing it to exist, between
Bulstrode and that quarterly thousand pounds?
He found Henry Orlebar ready to see him immedi-
ately on his official card being sent in. Orlebar was a
lean, horsey-looking man who might have sat for a
painting of the horse prophet the world over. But his
manners were good, and his smile very engaging.
"Circumstances look as though Mr. Ingram's death
might be due to foul play, Mr. Orlebar, which is why
I have called on you for a full account of why a thou-
sand pounds has been paid him once a quarter from this
office for the last five years." Orlebar let this pass, so
Pointer had guessed right.
"It's really Lord Bulstrode's fine feeling," Orlebar
began with a frank gaze bent on his visitor, as though
delighted to clear up any perplexity. "Of course this is
quite confidential, but Mr. Ingram was of such enor-
mous use to him when he met him not long after starting
this paper. I mean, by working out figures concerned
with advertising and circulation which revolutionized
all hitherto conceived ideas of such things. Bulstrode
followed his advice—his system really—and the paper
has advanced by leaps and bounds. Lord Bulstrode
offered him a sort of extra post as Director of Circula-
tion and Sales but Ingram turned the offer down quite
decidedly. So Bulstrode insisted on his accepting a sal-
ary of four thousand a year, a mere one per cent, of
what he saved the paper, thanks to his genius for
figures."
It all sounded so straightforward. But apart from
his preconceived notion as to what the payment was


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 261
"or, Pointer would not have believed a word of it. Such
i sum, paid for such a reason, would have been sent in
iirectly to Ingram's banking account, or posted him
by check.
"And why has not the usual thousand been sent in
this quarter day?" he asked.
"Wfte waiting for Lord Bulstrode to be back and
give his directions as to sending it in," Orlebar said
brightly. "Ingram's death, of course, alters the usual
procedure."
"Why was it always sent in such a fantastic way?"
Pointer asked next.
"Ingram's own wish entirely. He insisted on notes
being posted him in a registered envelope. Whether he
has any relatives who sponge on him ... of course,
it's not for me to say. But getting it in this way, it's
obvious that he need not pay it into his account unless
he wished to. Say it was overdrawn ... he said some-
thing to me once—" Orlebar seemed to have a perfect
spasm of frankness at the remembrance, his eyes look-
ing positively infantile in their candor—"which rather
suggested that. Though I've forgotten the exact words
by now." /
The one-hundred-pound notes looked to Pointer
much more like Bulstrode's own preference, but Pointer
thanked him, was assured that Orlebar had only been
too delighted to be of use, as Lord Bulstrode would be,
if he were not in South Africa getting some cool breezes
instead of this heat. Of course, Orlebar went on to say,
had he himself had any idea that Ingram's salary, for
it was virtually that, was of any interest, he would have
at once told the Yard all about it. But seeing that there


NINETEEN
Pointer went first to Lordship Lane. But the house in
question neither knew, nor cared to know more, of the
taciturn Mrs. Sampson, who had lodged with them so
short a time, had won such a fortune, and had not dis-
tributed it among the inmates of the house. He learned
no more than what had been told to the news agency
reporter. They claimed to have no idea whence she had
come to them, except that they fancied it was out of
town. She brought in flowers on occasions which sug-
gested a garden some distance away, as they were
always drooping and flagging. She had had no luggage
except one suitcase. Now, she had spoken to Cooks of
luggage for the hold, and had the right labels for big
trunks given her. Where was that luggage? Had she
no friends, he asked. No, none. No letters had ever come
for her until she had won "all that money," when the
house had been swamped with communications for her,
'phone calls for her, telegrams for her, visitors asking
for her. Had she had no 'phone calls at all before?
Pointer had tipped the elderly housemaid well, and she
was inclined to thaw. He explained that it was a ques.
266


268 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
of figure, who seemed to have no relations or friends to
inquire about her . . . she had, moreover, presumably
had at least two thousand five hundred pounds in franc;
in her possession, and whatever other money she owned
. . . But she had not disappeared. And Nevern had.
Pointer stopped at the house in Pawcett Road, a
dingy place.
"He's gone!" the untidy but good-natured looking
maid said promptly as soon as Pointer mentioned his
name. "You mean him as won all that money? Said he
couldn't stand 'the notriarty.' I asked him what he
meant by that and he says people coming cadging all
day long." She flushed. "I mean "she began awk-
wardly, "I mean—well, of course I don't mean—I
wasn't intending nothing, sir, in repeating that. Not
in your case."
"I haven't come about the money he won," Pointer
said reassuringly. "I only want him as a witness in a
street accident. How did he win his money? Horses?"
He heard all about the crossword competition, and
interspersed the hearing with questions which gave him
a very good idea of Mr. Nevern's appearance and
habits.
"Any friends who might know where he is now?" he
asked finally.
"He had a lady friend. She used to ring him up ever
so often on the 'phone. She's had a bad throat lately.
Said it hurt her to raise her voice. "Oh—" in answer
to further questions—"she was ever such an old friend.
They used to telephone to each other nearly every day.
She did crosswords too. Wonderful to think that there's


272 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY I
small salaries. He found it without any difficulty, and \
asked for Mrs. Findlay.
"She's left here, sir. About three weeks ago. Gone
down to her cottage in the country, before going
abroad."
Along came a stout woman in black. This was the
manageress. She took charge of the inquiries.
"The lady is wanted as a witness in a street acci- (
dent," Pointer explained, handing her his official card. 3
"She's gone to her cottage in the country before I
going on a tour round the world. Thinking of settling |
in New Patagonia, or New California, or one of those f
places. . . . She hasn't started yet, for I saw her only I
this morning passing the house."
"The address of her cottage?" he asked. The man-
ageress did not know it.
"How about some friend who can tell me where to
find her?" he suggested. "She doubtless has quite a
number."
"Only one. An old gentleman."
"You don't mean a Mr. Nevern? To whom the acci-
dent has happened?" Pointer asked quickly. "Could
you describe him?"
The manageress did. An elderly gentleman with curly
gray hair worn rather long. The manageress did not
know his name, and, though she had often seen him,
had hardly ever really looked at him. "Personally I
couldn't have stood his way of talking. He had a cleft
palate. But there, I dare say he was ever so nice an old
gentleman, really!"
"Has he called since Mrs. Findlay had left?"
"Yes, twice. But not lately. Just at first. He never


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 273
gave his name, just walked to her room and knocked,
if she was in, or asked for her and said he would come
again if she was out."
"This is Mrs. Findlay, isn't it?" He showed a copy
□f the newspaper portrait of the winner of the cross-
word puzzle. It had been cleverly blurred to look like a
snapshot. The manageress shook her head.
"Same sort of fat face and that, but Mrs. Findlay
had hair going over so far back on her forehead, and
long ringlets over her ears."
"Perhaps she's put a fringe on to be taken in," a
naid suggested, looking at the picture in her turn.
"Catch Mrs. Findlay doing that sort of thing,"
scoffed the manageress.
"And where's her veil and her star?" asked the maid,
laughing. "She wouldn't be found drowned without
them, would she?"
Pointer obtained a very close, but not very useful
description of the real Mrs. Findlay. The chief thing
30th maid and manageress insisted on was a floating
jlack veil which she always wore fastened to her hair
>r hat by a silver star—the star of peace.
"How about a Miss Longstaff who lives here?"
Pointer asked finally. "Does she know her?"
"She lives here, but she's not in at present. She
mows Mrs. Findlay all right—in a sort of way—or
lid. I mean she knew her to speak to while Mrs. Findlay
ived here, but they haven't kept it up."
"Mrs. Findlay wouldn't know who Miss Longstaff is,
rould she!" giggled the maid. The manageress shot her
i reproving glance.
"She means that Miss Longstaff took her room


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 275
merry-eyed girl, said with a laugh. "We call her that
because of the silver badge she always wears. She used
to come here regularly twice a day, but we haven't
seen her for—getting on for three weeks it must be
now . . . Or rather, she passed here only this morn-
ing, so I've seen her, but not to come in. She's left us."
"And perhaps you know the old gentleman who had
the accident. Nice old gentleman everyone says he was,
cleft palate . . ." Pointer described Mr. Nevern.
"Oh, you mean him as won all that money—Mr.
Nevern!" The manageress and a couple of waitresses
were genuinely sorry to hear of an accident to him,
"he's awfully short-sighted," one of them added. "Fancy
having had an accident now!"
"They were friends, weren't they?" Pointer inquired,
as though he knew that they were.
"In a sort of way," the manageress said rather hesi-
tatingly, "they used to just exchange a word. Cross-
word puzzles was the hobby of both, you see. I heard him
speak to her first of all. She'd been coming here ever
so much longer than he had, oh, years and years, before
I was moved here, and he's only been our customer for
a few months. But he leaned across her table one day,
and asked if she would pardon his asking it, but he
saw she worked at crosswords too, and could she sug-
gest a word of eight letters for Manifestation. And
quick as quick she said 'Epiphany will that fit?' I was
working on that one myself at the time in The People,
so I've remembered it. She was quite right, too. After
that they'd exchange a word or two, and then he sat
down at her table once and they started talking in
earnest. Not about crosswords. All about wars and


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 277
he would be captured, she added dryly, and kept her
door as good as locked whenever he was expected. Her
eyes were on him all the time, he was sure that in some
way his interest in Mrs. Findlay intensely interested
this girl. Whether it did more, whether it disquieted
her, even Pointer could not say.
"I understand that you borrowed a book from Mrs.
Findlay," he went on, "how are you going to return
it, if you don't know her address?"
"I suppose she'll write me about it, or it'll have to
stand as a sort of farewell offering," Alfreda said flip-
pantly. "Useful book, too. A thesaurus."
"Do you know if she had ever lent it before?" he
asked.
'She frowned, as though intrigued by this interest in
the volume.
"As a matter of fact, this man you've asked me
about, the old man with the cleft palate, had just bor-
rowed it and brought it back. May I ask why?"
"Was there any kind of bookmark in it?" Pointer
asked. "Frankly, Miss Longstaff, I consider that detail,
though it sounds trifling, quite important."
"I like your 'frankly'," she murmured, eyeing him
with eyes that almost glittered. "Bookmark . . . there
were quite a lot of scraps of paper in it. Marking places
(I suppose. I think they're most of them still in it." She
stretched out a hand and picked up a well-worn looking
volume from a shelf that formed part of what looked
like a Tudor dresser—in the manageress's opinion—
and fluttered it. Nothing fell out. "Sorry, I must have
lost them one by one."
"Could you tell me if they were plain, or colored?"


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 283
mrned black—apparently—with years of sun and
vind. His heart was beating a little faster than usual.
iVould his guess prove right?
The boy stood with knitted brows studying the scene
ntently.
"That there shed!" he announced triumphantly.
"Ah!" Pointer said equably, and yet as one pleased
ivith a pupil, "and where was it afore?"
"Over in that corner!" The young voice almost
squeaked now. "That's right! And where it now stands
was a pit for manure, chicken manure, she gets it from
our chickens. That's it, and Mrs. Findlay has cleared
it out, filled it up, and put the shed over it. The old
gent and she must have worked hard. She never has no
one to help her with her garden."
"Ah, I knowed something had been moved," Pointer
said, nodding his head sagely. "When did you last see
it in the corner? It's no good raking over ground for
at least a fortnight what's had a shed stood over it.
Needs that time to air, or ye digs in the sour top-soil."
"When I delivered here larst, it stood in its old
place," was all the boy could tell him, and that, it
seemed, was about a week ago—just before Ingram's
murder, Pointer finally made out.
"Well, here's a penny, son, and thank ye," and the
gardener began in a leisurely way to light his pipe until
the boy could no longer see him, which meant only
until he had closed the gate, for the little path turned
so abruptly in joining the road that the cottage was
out of sight in a minute. Then the gardener had a look
at the tool shed. It was locked, but what interested him
most was that it was on a four-wheeled truck base.


TWENTY-ONE
Alpeeda tried to swing a chair up, but it was knocked
from her grasp. As it fell with a crash, something else
crashed too—the French window. The linen blind was
torn aside. A rock struck full on her assailant, who
fell away and slowly lurched to her knees. Alfreda did
not wait for further miracles. Again she swung the
chair up, and, however clumsily this time, brought it
down full on the swaying figure. The next moment it
was taken from her.
"You're safe now! Steady on—he's down!" came a
well known voice as a hand was laid on her arm. But
ALfreda's blood was up. She twisted herself free.
"Of course he is! That's why I'm going to hit him!"
She spoke with passion, and Chief Inspector Pointer
had to fairly shove her aside with his elbow, while he
bent down over the hat and veil and lifted them off,
showing a head of beautifully parted gray hair, and
with little ring curls all around and long corkscrews
over each ear. He felt the skull.
"Nothing broken," he murmured with inward relief.
He had flung that rock with more of a swing than he
290


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 291
would have done had not the circumstances been a bit
pressing. Magistrates have a preference for undamaged
prisoners, and Pointer himself was very sharp with his
own men as to any rough handling of their captives.
"I'll put these on him," he clicked handcuffs around
the neat lace cuffs and the man's hands protruding from
bhem.
"What—what "came thickly from beneath the
matronly hair, in a hoarse voice.
"Lawrence Gilmour, I arrest you for the murder of
Mr. Charles Ingram and of Mrs. Mary Findlay"
followed swiftly the caution.
Gilmour said nothing now. He set his teeth and gave
Alfreda Longstaff a look that she never forgot, that
would sometimes wake her up bathed in cold perspira-
tion of a night.
Alfreda said nothing in answer to it. Something in
the grave, stern, almost sad, face of the detective officer
made her realize the tremendous moment that this was.
. . . She, a living human being, was looking at a man
who might very soon be that no longer.
"You damned spy," he said now between his teeth.
"Take your ugly face out of my sight."
Pointer spoke sharply. "Mr. Gilmour, I think you
had better say nothing, unless you wish to make a state-
ment to me."
"What motive do you intend to allege? Of course
I'm innocent." He caught the direction of the calm
gray eyes that just for a moment rested on the shed
outside. Gilmour's face went white. Again his eye fell
on Alfreda. Again she shrank from the look of it.
"What motive?" he snarled at the chief inspector.


2'92 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
"Crosswords," Pointer said briefly, and Gilmour
after that said no more. There was a sound behind
them. A man in blue came in. Pointer said a word to
him and then took Alfreda into another room. He made
her sit down there, for she was trembling violently. She
was afraid that she was going to be sick.
"Badly frightened?" he asked.
He got the instant reaction that he knew would
come.
"Not in the least. I'll telephone for you, if you like."
But she would have found it difficult to unhook the
receiver. Pointer took out a flat flask and unscrewed
the cup. He filled it.
"It won't hurt you," he said. "I really advise it. I
don't doubt your pluck. But you were within an inch
of death, Miss Longstaff." Pointer had had to leave
the cottage for a brief word over the telephone to the
Yard. The constable had misunderstood Miss Long-
staff's approach by the back, had thought her a friend
of the so-called Mrs. Findlay, and only Pointer's return
and his sight of the dropped handbag on the grass out-
side had saved Alfreda. That handbag left there did not
suggest a confederate to his quick brain.
She swallowed the brandy obediently while he tele-
phoned. Then he turned to her. Even as he did so a
car whizzed up. It was his own men whom he had sum-
moned from town just after first prodding that place in
the garden under the shed.
"Suppose we go back to town together in my car,"
he suggested, and Alfreda was glad of the offer.
"Now tell me how you came to be down here, how
you knew, after all, where to come?"


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 293
She explained. "And where is Mrs. Findlay? The real
Mrs. Findlay?"
"Beneath that shed out in the garden we have just
left," Pointer said truthfully. This was no nature that
needed shielding. "Gilmour, in the guise of an old man
"—he assumed the name of Nevern-—became friendly
with her, and murdered her. Strangled her and buried
her in her own garden."
"You spoke of crosswords. Do you mean she won a
crossword prize and he killed her just for that?" she
asked in horror.
That was but a small part of Gilmour's intended
haul, Pointer could have told her. But he did not. That
would all come out at the trial.
"And why, why did he pretend to care for me?" she
asked. "You know, Mr. Pointer, that's what started all
my suspicions." She played with her gloves on her lap.
"When he came down to our village, I was very much
impressed with him. I went for him, they'll all tell you
down there. I suppose I did." She spoke judicially,
quite objectively. "He stood to me for opportunity—
escape—and all that sort of thing. But he flirted with
me, and then dropped me. Then he came down again.
I was perfectly certain, as I say, that he was not in
love with me, I was sure of it. And I decided that two
could play at that game too. I would come to London
and have a pleasant time while looking around for work
that would lead on to something, and then I would drop
Lawrence Gilmour just as he had dropped me. For, you
see, Mr. Pointer, I knew that he didn't care for me.
I couldn't think why on earth he should pretend to,
but I did have sense enough to know it was only a


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 299
had turned into would win one, and ultimately, all of
them. I expected, first of all, before making inquiries,
that both the winners after Ingram's murder would be
incarnations of Mr. Gilmour. But they were seen to-
gether. One had disappeared entirely after taking his
prize money, and the other had left her usual haunts
but had been seen about, a person whom I would have
chosen myself in Gilmour's position. A strange, un-
friendly, solitary woman whose outline would identify
her, without a scrutiny of her features. Tho.se ringlets,
that floating veil, that star ... no one would look
closely under the big hat. And she had a sore throat
. . . could muffle up."
"Bit of luck that, for Gilmour."
"Assisted by Gilmour," Pointer said, "I suspect he
put something into her tea to make her throat sore.
And be able to drop in—after she was dead—at the
chemist's for the 'same throat medicine as you put up
for me before.'"
Pointer was right. Gilmour had done just that.
"Where was Gilmour supposed to be when he was
murdering the old lady?"
"With Miss Longstaff, sir. He constantly lately has
taken days off, out of his leave, on the plea of his
fiancee being up in town, and of course has had it
made easy for him to do."
"All the world loves a lover," quoted Major Pelham
with macabre relish.
"Her liking to have her mornings to herself suited
him excellently, of course," Pointer went on. "Just as
she tells me that he often excused himself after a bare
half hour or even less, on the plea of a colleague being


302 THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY
spot it, yet it'll prove the link between him and meet
little Mr. Nevern."
"What do you guess?" Pelham asked promptly.
"From the way the paper has been screwed up, sir.
I should say that he wrapped a ring in it. He only
wears one, a fine scarab. My guess is that he forgot
to take it off once when he was Mr. Nevern, decided to
be on the safe side and wrapped it in a scrap of paper
before dropping it in his pocket because of its very
shallow setting. It is just a little loose."
"But why put it in his dressing-gown pocket?" Pel-
ham persisted, "he hardly strolled across London wear-
ing that when he became Mr. Nevern, did he?"
"A scarab is supposed to bring luck," Pointer said.
"It looks to me as though he had put it in his dressing-
gown when he murdered Ingram for luck. And when he
dropped the cartridge case, picked up off the bedroom
floor, in the passage, he must have dropped the paper
out too, tearing it as he scooped out the cartridge case.
He, or someone else, stepping on it, flattened it out on
the cream ground of the carpet, and never noticed it."
"Quite a neat little guess," Pelham said approv-
ingly. Later on, they both learned that it was the truth.
"By the way, what about the system?"
"I let Mr. Appleton have it, sir, or a copy of it. He's
just worked it with such success in Ostend and the
Casino has offered him three thousand a year for life
to sell it to them. He's accepted. What with what he's
made before I stepped in, and this nice little annuity,
he feels quite comfortable about the future and is going
to have his operation with a tranquil mind next month.
Mrs. Appleton can't do enough to make up to him for


THE TALL HOUSE MYSTERY 303
her terrible suspicion. As for Appleton, he really did
suspect Frederick Ingram—and a cipher motive."
"The trouble was Appleton always acted," Pelham
said, "and it's deuced difficult to spot when an actor's
real, and when he's playing a part. I'm glad that shark
Tark won't get any of the spoils."
So was Pointer. "I went so far as to explain to Mr.
Haliburton what I had happened to overhear once in
Appleton's room abroad," he said gravely, quite un-
deterred by the grin of Pelham at the word 'happened,'
"and he's dropped Tark. Definitely. I think he sus-
pects that the ramming of his skiff may have just been
part of a plan to meet Ingram under unimpeachable
auspices. Tark, of course, is the type you meet in out-
of-the-way places of the world playing poker for his
boots—or yours. He must have been the one who hunted
through the study before Miss Longstaff. That was
why he had to go on and wake the servants. She cut
him off from the main stairs. Tark has resource and a
face of granite."
"Why not say he has a face like Gilmour's ,heart,"
suggested Pelham. "I suppose Gilmour put that second
corrected sheet into the linen hamper himself, and then
waited for Moy to think of looking there?"
"I think that's what happened, sir. That hole was a
bad blunder. He shot Ingram in his bed, to the best of
my belief, Ingram was an unusually heavy sleeper, we
know. I think Gilmour drew the sheet up over his face
when he lay on his back fast asleep, stood at the end
of the bed, or the other side of the room with his auto-
matic fitted with a silencer, and shot him dead, through
the sheet and the center of the forehead. It was a very