LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER II

      I

      THE next day—Saturday—was a windless day of hard frost and bright sunshine. The sort of day, in fact, which had been used to fill the placid heart of Mr Colby with boyish joy. But now Mr Colby’s heart was black.

      Mr Colby sat, a huddled and shrunken little figure, at the table in his tiny dining-room. The chair upon the other side of the table was occupied by Miss Ursula Finch, the editor and owner of the Holmdale Clarion. Miss Finch was small and neat and brisk. Miss Finch’s age might have been thirty-three but probably was ten years more than this. Miss Finch was severely smart in a tweedy-well-tailored manner. Miss Finch’s pencil was busy among the rustling pages of her notebook, for Miss Finch was her own star reporter. But the eager, piquant face of Miss Finch was clouded with most unbusinesslike sympathy. And although her questions rattled on and on and her pencil flew, the eyes of Miss Finch were suspiciously bright.

      It seemed suddenly to Mr Colby that he could not stand any more. Miss Finch had asked him a question. He did not answer it. He sat staring across the little room at the yellow distempered wall. First, all those policemen asking questions. What time did he leave? What time did you expect him back? Where was he going? What was he doing? Why was he doing it? What time did you start to look for him? Did anyone go with you to look for him? Where did you find him? How did you find him? Do you know anyone who bears enmity against yourself or him? If so, why? If not, why not? How? Who? Where? What? When? And now, this woman—although she was nicer than the policemen—now this woman, asking her questions. The same questions really, only put differently and more, as a man might say, intimate …

      Mr Colby thought of the bedroom immediately above this room where he sat; the bedroom where, on the double bed, Mrs Colby lay a huddled and vacantly staring heap …

      Mr Colby got to his feet. His chair slid back along the boards with a grating clatter. He said:

      ‘I’m sorry, miss. I can’t tell you any more. I want—I want—’ Mr Colby shut his mouth suddenly. He sat down again with something of a bump and remained sitting, his folded hands squeezed between his knees. He looked at the floor.

      Miss Finch shut her note-book with a decisive snap and put round it its elastic band. She rose from her chair. Automatically Mr Colby, a well-mannered little person, got to his feet. Miss Finch came round the table in an impulsive rush. ‘I ought,’ said Miss Finch, ‘to have something awful done to me for worrying you, Mr Colby, upon such a dreadful day as this must be for you. But I would like you to understand, Mr Colby, that however much of a ghoulish nuisance I may seem, I may really be doing something to help. It may not seem like that to you at the moment. But it really is. You see, Mr Colby, nowadays the Press, by throwing what you might call a public light on things, helps authorities to … to … to find the monsters responsible for—’

      ‘Oh, please!’ said Mr Colby, holding out his hand as if to protect himself from a blow.

      Miss Finch, with an impulsive gesture, seized the hand in both of hers and pressed it. ‘You poor man!’ she said.

      Mr Colby withdrew his hand. Mr Colby opened the door for Miss Finch. In the hall Miss Finch halted and collected her stubby umbrella and tucked it martially beneath her left arm. She said:

      ‘If there is anything I can do for you or Mrs Colby—in a purely private capacity, I mean, Mr Colby—I do hope you will let me know … You wouldn’t like me, I suppose, to run up and sit with Mrs Colby for a little while? It would only be a little, because I’m so busy …’

      Mr Colby shook his head dumbly. He opened the street door and shut it, a second later, upon the well-tailored back of Miss Finch. He wandered back to his dining-room and sat down once more at his dining-table and sighed and swallowed very hard and put his head in his hands.

      II

      ‘Do they,’ asked Sir Montague Flushing of his manservant, ‘insist upon seeing me personally?’

      Spender bowed gravely. ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘And you have put them in …?’ said Sir Montague.

      ‘In the library, sir.’

      Sir Montague blew out his cheeks and frowned. Sir Montague paced up and down the carpet. He said at last, half to himself:

      ‘These newspaper men are a public nuisance!’

      ‘Should I, sir,’ suggested Spender, ‘tell them that you are too busy to see them?’

      ‘No,’ said Sir Montague. ‘No. No. No. I suppose I must see ’em. What papers did you say they came from?’

      ‘One of the—er—gentlemen, sir,’ said Spender, ‘stated that he represented The Evening Mercury. The other was from The Wire.

      ‘I see. I see,’ said Sir Montague.

      (Extract from The Evening Mercury, dated Saturday,

      24th November.)

      THE HOLMDALE MURDER

      etc., etc.

      (From our Special Correspondent.)

       Holmdale, Saturday

      Stranger and stranger grows the mystery of the murdered schoolboy, whose body was found at ten o’clock last night in the middle of a peaceful roadway in Holmdale Garden City. The problem that faces the police is no small one. The boy—Lionel Frederick Colby, of 4 The Keep, Holmdale—had left home at about 7.30 p.m. to visit the Boys’ Club, whose meetings are held in the Trumpington Hall. He had been in good spirits when he left home and had arrived at twenty-five minutes to eight at the Boys’ Club. Here he had spent the

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