“Let’s try a feather on his nose,” suggested the girl. “Have you got a feather? No? Well, I suppose a hair will do.” She plucked one from her own head and laid it delicately across the corpse’s nostrils; it did not quiver. She waited a few moments till signs of incipient apoplexy became apparent in the corpse’s features, then lifted the hair and examined it closely. “It never moved,” she announced. “Here, constable, you’d better keep this. It’s a valuable piece of evidence, you know. Have you got a pocket-book?”
The constable took the hair and placed it carefully between the blank pages of his notebook. He was not quite certain as to its precise importance, but he was very amenable to suggestion. “’E’s dead all right,” he announced portentously.
In the background Mr. Priestley was hovering uneasily. The aching to escape was getting almost unbearable. Whatever this extraordinary girl might or might not be, her continued proximity to the representative of the Law was intolerable. Escape first, and explanations, perhaps, afterwards; but anyhow, escape first! He cast agonising glances from her to the invitingly open window, and from the open window to her. The ridiculous child did not seem even to understand the awful gravity of her position.
Casting discretion to the winds, he caught her eye with his own rolling optic, jerked his head backward and then nodded it towards the window; he could not make his meaning plainer without words.
He had made it only too plain. The constable might not have possessed the brightest intellect in Duffley, but Mr. Priestley’s agitated eye and jerky leaping would have conveyed suspicion to the most charitable. The constable rose portentously to his feet. Mr. Priestley edged towards the window. The constable followed him.
Unfortunately for Mr. Priestley’s plans it was his opponent this time who had the revolver. Nor did he scruple to employ it. “You stand still!” ordered the constable in a dignified bellow, the inner meaning of the situation growing plainer to him every minute. Here was a perfectly good murder, and here were two people in a state of considerable agitation, and here also was a revolver. This wanted looking into. “You stand still!” he repeated, advancing to look into it.
Mr. Priestley stood still; but he did not stand silent. “Run!” he shouted suddenly to the girl, unawed even by the menacing revolver. “Run for it—window—I’ll look after this chap! Get away!”
“Ho!” said the policeman, and promptly placed his burly body between the girl and the window. “Would, would you? You’ll ’ave to comealongerme, both of you. Now then, ’ands up!”
It is difficult not to accede to the request of a formidable man when his demand is emphasised by a judiciously wielded revolver, and there was no doubt that the constable was now a very formidable man indeed. The state of affairs had become even clearer to him. Here were not only two murderers, caught quite literally red-handed, but here also was himself, and at the business end of a revolver. Even the constable could put this two and two together and make the answer “sergeant.”
After a momentary hesitation, Mr. Priestley’s hands wobbled up. After a still longer hesitation, those of the girl did also. The happy, carefree expression had departed from her face; she looked like a lady who had made advances to a cow and found that she was toying with a bull. The corpse took a hasty glance round and uttered a faint, strangled sound, but spoke no word; his not to reason why, his but to do and die. He went on dying.