"The man misunderstood the whole thing," Barbara said quickly. "Mr. Vardon and I had—well—had a quarrel. I was in a horrid temper. Things had been rubbing it in to me what marrying a poor man meant—"
Lady Ash would not have cared to hear herself alluded to as "things."
"Philip has the sweetest, kindest temper in the world. I was a perfect little beast to him. Oh, a perfect toad. Simply too loathsome for words. I goaded him into saying those words. Of course, he didn't mean anything. And, of course, I knew he didn't mean anything!"
"The man heard incorrectly. No such words in fact, were spoken," interrupted Dorset Steele in such stentorian tones that his clerk in the next room jumped. "Will you hold your tongue, Barbara!"
Barbara shook her head.
"If this story is going about, it had better be faced. It's just luck that the only time such a phrase was ever used, was when there was an eavesdroppr. It was Banks, wasn't it?" she asked. "Father of Bobby Banks, whom we had to discharge. He was one of the caddies." Barbara was honorary secretary of the golf club run by the G.F.S.
"Exactly. The man had a grudge, and magnified some trifle," Dorset Steele nodded energetically.
"Mr. Vardon refused to see me this morning," Pointer said after a pause.
"On my instructions," snapped the solicitor.
"Pity. He might be able to straighten this little tangle out by one word."
"My experience is that one word only ties tangles tighter." In his irritation Dorset Steele' was getting as alliterative as a Skald.
"You still think it's safer not to let him talk to me?" Pointer asked.
"Safer? You mean wiser. Certainly. Look at this whole conversation—" the solicitor evidently considered it a sorry sight. "The case is going to the dogs."
Pointer, without glancing at Barbara, rose.
"If you'll excuse me, I'll smoke a pipe outside."
He thought that the girl needed a respite.
In silence Barbara stretched a hand up to her grandfather's shoulder and side by side the two stood looking into the fire.
She saw a dark enough picture. He saw a worse one still.
"Did I—did I bungle things?" she asked at last, under her breath. "The truth seemed best."
"Truth!" the solicitor snorted. "This conversation on the links—"
"If only it hadn't happened," she said sadly.
"If only it hadn't been overheard, it could have been kept from the jury!" he muttered. "Well, when you see your Philip next, try to din a few elementary facts into his head. Truth is what it's best for the other side to believe," he repeated forcefully.
"You'll never din that into his head. Nor into mine either, I'm afraid."
Pointer came in again. He still had the bag with him. Now he placed it on a table behind the door.
"Nothing is to be said about that, until the door is closed." He took up a place at the window, Steps were heard outside. Coming up the stairs. They were on the first floor. Suddenly there came a little halt in them. A sort of catch. Then they went on again. The door opened. Vardon came in. He looked older, leaner. Barbara felt with a sudden pang that she would give all that she possessed to see again that sunny, all's-well-with-the-world look on his face. She watched him with misty eyes. Had she turned an innocent man into a criminal? Was it possible that she had egged him on, talked him on, nagged him on to—She hated herself for the terrible doubt but it was there. Not of the man as he would have been had she let him alone, but of the man whose nerves she might have worn down with her constant reproachings, exhortations for many months now. Had he—the stranger—done this thing?
Vardon's eyebrows lifted as he shook hands with the two of them.
"We've found the bag that went astray," Pointer said cheerfully. "Just look through it, and see if everything's there. It's unlocked, as you said."
Vardon started. He looked swiftly, not at the bag, but first at Pointer and then at the solicitor. The bag came third. Then he opened it, and bent over the things inside. Pointer had put the paper nearly on top.
"Ah, here it is! Now, you see!" Vardon drew it out. But the paper had been under his fingers for fully a second. True, he looked as though a load had fallen from him, but he also looked a little bewildered. Pointer thought that he looked as though not quite able to believe his own luck.
The Chief Inspector took the sheet and asked if he identified it as the one that Mrs. Tangye had written in his rooms. If so, the Scotland Yard man would take it with him, giving Dorset Steele a receipt for it. The solicitor initialled it. He had every confidence in Pointer but he took nothing on trust. Like Pointer himself.
"Mr. Vardon, what screw did you have that you could turn to order to get money?" Pointer asked as the paper changed hands finally.
Vardon's face darkened. He looked narrowly at the two men. He did not glance towards Barbara.
"Just a silly phrase," he said earnestly. "Just a silly, empty phrase."
And to this explanation he stuck. Barbara said nothing. She sat wrapt in suffering. Had Philip only meant that? His face came back to her. Lowering. Tainted by their talk—her talk—of money as the only goal. She felt certain that he had meant something more.
Pointer left the three to a dreary silence, and drove off.
"So he really had a real bag and a real paper from Mrs. Tangye," Wilmot murmured when he dropped in at the Yard in answer to a telephone message from Pointer.
"And the latter fact interested him far less than his uncertainty as to whether something else was, or was not in the bag."
"Perhaps he was acting?"
"He was far too absorbed in finding out what was in the bag—and what was not. So am I therefore."
"Pretty wide field." Wilmot gave his little smile, "I mean, what might have been in the bag, and wasn't."
"Pretty wide, but not illimitable."
"Well, of course, as a matter of fact, it would have to be something the bag would contain." Haviland had managed to make time to be present at the interview too.
Wilmot at once agreed that that would shut out certain articles.
"And I can see the objections to it being a live animal, or a gas, or a liquid," the newspaper man went on suavely. "But even so, the field seems pretty wide for guesswork. Pray, how do you start, Pointer?"
"Something like this: Vardon expected to find something in that bag that wasn't there. He did not look in the least worried, or regretful at its absence, and was on the whole, thankful not to find it.
"So, evidently it was something that would have made his position worse. That is to say, that would have thrown a deeper suspicion on him.
"While his fingers actually passed by the sheet of paper we all wanted to see, the one he claims Mrs. Tangye wrote when she gave him the money, they kept searching the pockets in the bag's lining. Pockets that would only admit of papers. He stared first and hardest at a long envelope-which proved to contain his cheque-book. He pulled it half out while he thought we were all busy with the paper. As soon as he had a clear view of its top, he thrust it back. The address was away from him. It was an unopened envelope evidently, but of the same long, narrow shape, that's the danger. He eyed the remaining papers and books but he didn't take any up."
"Securities?" asked Wilmot, "do you think he is missing anything of that kind?"
"I don't think it's money. Vardon didn't look as he would have done if anything on which he had counted were missing, let alone anything for the sake of which he might be supposed to've committed a crime.