He took the words out of her mouth. “Sir Bartholomew Strange. Sir Bartholomew Humbug.
I’d like to know what goes on in that precious Sanatorium of his.
Nerve cases. That’s what they say. You’re in there and you can’t get out. And they say you’ve gone of your own free will.
Free will!
Just because they get hold of you when you’ve got the horrors.” He was shaking now. His mouth drooped suddenly. “I’m all to pieces,” he said apologetically. “All to pieces.” He called to the waiter, pressed Egg to have another drink, and when she refused, ordered one himself. “That’s better,” he said as he drained the glass. “Got my nerve back now. Nasty business losing your nerve.
Mustn’t make Cynthia angry.
She told me not to talk.” He nodded his head once or twice.
“Wouldn’t do to tell the police all this,” he said. “They might think I’d bumped old Strange off. Eh?
You realise, don’t you, that someone must have done it? One of us must have killed him. That’s a funny thought.
Which of us? That’s the question.”
“Perhaps you know which,” said Egg.
“What d’you say that for? Why should I know?” He looked at her angrily and suspiciously. “I don’t know anything about it, I tell you.
I wasn’t going to take that damnable ‘cure’ of his. No matter what Cynthia said - I wasn’t going to take it.
He was up to something - they were both up to something. But they couldn’t fool me.” He drew himself up. “I’m a strong man, Miss Lytton Gore.”
“I’m sure you are,” said Egg. “Tell me, do you know anything of a Mrs. de Rushbridger who is at the Sanatorium?”
“Rushbridger? Rushbridger?
Old Strange said something about her.
Now what was it? Can’t remember anything.” He sighed, shook his head. “Memory’s going, that’s what it is.
And I’ve got enemies - a lot of enemies.
They may be spying on me now.” He looked round uneasily. Then he leant across the table to Egg. “What was that woman doing in my room that day?”
“What woman?”
“Rabbit-faced woman. Writes plays.
It was the morning after - after he died.
I’d just come up from breakfast. She came out of my room and went through the baize door at the end of the passage - went through into the servants’ quarter.
Odd, eh?
Why did she go into my room?
What did she think she’d find there? What did she want to go nosing about for, anyway? What’s it got to do with her? He leaned forward confidentially.
Or do you think it’s true what Cynthia says?”
“What does Mrs. Dacres say?”
“Says I imagined it.
Says I was ‘seeing things.’” He laughed uncertainly. “I do see things now and again. Pink mice - snakes - all that sort of thing. But seein’ a woman’s different ...
I did see her.
She’s a queer fish, that woman.
Nasty sort of eye she’s got. Goes through you.” He leaned back on the soft couch. He seemed to be dropping asleep.
Egg got up.
“I must be going.
Thank you very much, Captain Dacres.”
“Don’t thank me.
Delighted. Absolutely delighted ... ” His voice tailed off.
“I’d better go before he passes out altogether,” thought Egg.
She emerged from the smoky atmosphere of the Seventy-Two Club into the cool evening air.
Beatrice, the housemaid, had said that Miss Wills poked and pried.
Now came this story from Freddie Dacres.
What had Miss Wills been looking for? What had she found?
Was it possible that Miss Wills knew something?
Was there anything in this rather muddled story about Sir Bartholomew Strange?
Had Freddie Dacres secretly feared and hated him?
It seemed possible.
But in all this no hint of any guilty knowledge in the Babbington case.
“How odd it would be,” said Egg to herself, “if he wasn’t murdered after all.”