And yet, I argued with myself, what could he do? Clearly, Jack must never come over again, whatever construction Longman might put on it. And I began to wonder if that was what he had been playing for. If he had gone straight to Mary or Callaghan, it might have precipitated a crisis he was anxious to avoid. And so he had adopted the roundabout method of sending them a warning through me.
At first Mary wouldn't believe me when I told her that he suspected her and Jack. It was perfectly true that Callaghan had been two or three times to the snake farm, because they had both thought it advisable, but what was there suspicious in that? And it wasn't until I metaphorically shook her, and made her understand that I wasn't inventing it, that she began to realise the situation. Like all people in love, she had blissfully believed that no one else knew, and now she had to adjust her outlook to include the fact that the one person of all others she wanted to keep in ignorance was fully aware of her secret.
'It won't matter after tomorrow,' she said a bit pitifully. 'I don't suppose I'll ever see Jack again. And we couldn't help falling in love with one another, could we?'
'Look here, my dear,' I said, 'I don't want to be brutal, but must there be tomorrow? Can't you put him off?'
'And not say good-bye!' she cried indignantly. 'How can you suggest such a thing? Besides, George knows he's coming.'
There was no more to be said and I let the subject drop. But I was uneasy. Try as I would I couldn't get rid of a premonition of trouble. For a man of Longman's nature to know his wife was in love with another man and not forbid that man the house, seemed amazing to me.
Charlie Maxwell paused and lit a cigarette.
Then he burst out suddenly: 'My God! I wish I knew the truth of what happened next day. I'm wrong: I do know it, but I can't prove it. We had lunch as usual, and after it was over that swine went off to his snake farm. His last words as he left us were to tell Mary to ask young Callaghan to stop for dinner.'
'You must be wrong, Uncle Charlie,' she said. 'He can't suspect.' She was all excited and keyed up. There would be an hour with him alone, at any rate. But as the afternoon passed and there was no sign of him, she got more and more unsettled. Useless for me to tell her that he must have been detained: he'd have telephoned if that had been the case. There must have been an accident, or he was ill or something. So I rang through for her to his station, to find that he had left just after lunch.
'Then he's been thrown from his pony!' she cried. 'Uncle Charlie, we must go and search along the track. I know the way, and it will be dark soon.'
I pulled out my car, and we started off. I, too, was feeling a bit uneasy. The youngster might have been thrown. We'd gone about a mile when suddenly she gripped my arm. 'There is his pony,' she said tensely. 'Tethered to the gate of the snake farm.'
I stopped the car. A chestnut cob was placidly grazing by the side of the road. 'He must be with George,' I said quietly. 'I'll go and see. You stop in the car.'
I went through the gate. What had kept the youngster there for four hours? 'Longman!' I shouted, and got an answering hail.
'Come in,' he cried. 'I've just got to finish this culture and then I'm through.'
'Have you seen young Callaghan?' I said.
'Not since early this afternoon. He left here about three hours ago. Isn't he at the house?'
'He is not,' I answered. 'And his pony is still tied up to the gate.'
He pushed back his chair and rose. 'What on earth can have happened?' he cried. 'He left me to go there, and since then I've been here in the laboratory.'
We went out and shouted his name. No answer. Mary had joined us. Once again we shouted. And this time we were answered. From a building about forty yards away there came peal after peal of wild laughter— laughter that froze the blood in one's veins.
'My God! What's that?' I muttered, and as I spoke I saw Longman's face. For a second he had let himself go, and his expression was one of devilish joy. Then the mask returned, and he began to run towards the sound. 'He's in the snake house,' he shouted, 'and he can't open the door from the inside.'
It was a Yale lock which shut automatically and I still wake up sweating sometimes at night when I remember those next few minutes. Inside the room were scores of snakes hissing venomously, and the demented youngster. He was sitting on the floor babbling foolishly, whilst every now and then he uttered a shout of laughter. He had gone mad, and when we pulled him out he struggled to get back. 'Pretty snakes,' he kept on saying. 'I like pretty snakes.'
Mary, poor child, was spared that part because she had fainted, and when we got Callaghan to the laboratory Longman and I faced one another. 'What a dreadful thing!' he said. 'And if only he had known, all those snakes are harmless. They have had their fangs removed.'
'How did he get in there?' I demanded.
'Curious, possibly, to see what was inside,' he said calmly. 'And then the door shut behind him.' And speaking, knew that I knew he lied.
Charlie Maxwell leaned back in his chair. "I have said things to men in my life," he continued, "which have seared their souls. I have fought men in my life, where if there had been weapons one of us would have died. But I have never said to any man what I said to George Longman that evening, while Jack Callaghan still babbled in his corner. And I have never been nearer to murdering any man without a weapon than I was when I fought George Longman that evening. I am as certain that he decoyed that poor boy into that foul place and shut him in as I am that I am sitting in this chair. Can't you picture the hours of mental agony the poor boy went through till his brain could stand it no more and his reason snapped?"
"Is he still insane?" asked the Doctor.
Charlie nodded. "A hopeless case. Mary had brain fever, and you see what she is now. I have never said anything to her—naturally, I had not a vestige of proof—and she still thinks it was an accident. At least," he added, as he rose, "I suppose she does. But she must think it funny that her husband has forbidden her to speak to me. And once or twice this voyage I've seen her look at him as if..."
He paused and lit another cigarette.
"As if," he repeated, "she would not rush to open the door of a snake house in which he was locked, even if the snakes were not harmless."
III. — THE GREAT MAGOR DIAMOND
I SUPPOSE, as a law-abiding citizen, I should have informed the police; but I didn't. I think it was the barefaced impudence of the thing that intrigued me; and anyway, what would have been the use of telling a French gendarme the truth concerning the great Magor Diamond mystery? It had happened in England, as all the world knows, five years previously. But much water flows under the bridge in that time: other crimes had flitted across the stage, and even that nine days wonder was forgotten. Besides, as I say, the little blighter intrigued me.
I met him at Aix-les-Bains doing a cure. We were both staying at the Hotel Splendide, and once or twice I had run into him in the bar when we were allowing ourselves a slight fall from grace. He was a small man by the name of Martin—William Martin, of Birmingham. At least, that was what was entered up in the visitors' book; afterwards, I wondered.
His age I put down at about forty-five, though he might have been older. He was clean shaven and his hair was plentifully flecked with grey. But his hands were the most noticeable thing about him. He had for his height quite the longest fingers I have ever seen, especially the top joints, which he could bend back in a most uncanny way. They were, in fact, the fingers of a conjurer, and I was not surprised when, one evening, he did some amazing tricks with a pack of cards for the benefit of two or three of us who happened to be sitting with him. And then, just as he was going to bed he suddenly paused by the door in a startled way.
"Good gracious me, gentlemen,"