The Secret Vanguard Read Free

debasing activity possible to man. Any specific suspicion can come as an enormous relief. You see?’
    ‘I really believe I do.’ Hetherton smiled with pleasure. ‘It is a response of considerable interest from the point of view of ethical theory, is it not?’
    ‘No doubt. But the simple fact is this: when my sergeant told me that Philip Ploss had been murdered I fell into a gamesome mood and insisted that it would prove to be suicide after all. There was no weapon – but then the thing had happened on some sort of tower, presumably in the open air. So I said it was done with a balloon.’
    ‘With a balloon?’ Hetherton’s bewilderment made him lay down his knife and fork with extra care.
    ‘A small, very buoyant, helium-filled balloon. You wait for a dark night and a stiff breeze blowing out to sea. Then you go into the open air and shoot yourself – having attached the balloon to the revolver first. The revolver vanishes and no verdict of suicide is possible.’
    ‘Really, I can hardly imagine–’
    Appleby smiled. ‘No more can anyone else. This is just what I made up for the sergeant as we motored down: the local police, you’ll realize, having sent for us pretty quick. I embroidered on the idea readily enough. Our only chance, I said, lay in revolver and balloon being one day cut out of the tummy of a shark. The balloon might prove to have been made in Japan. Investigations would be instituted in Tokyo. That sort of thing.’
    ‘I see.’ Hetherton nodded slowly. It could not be maintained, the nod seemed to say, that the humour Appleby was describing wore or carried well.
    ‘Call it professional callousness. Ploss meant little to me. I had never been moved or even pleased by his verse. Of his life I knew nothing at all. From his death I hoped to get a certain intellectual stimulus. I hoped, that is to say, that there would be a decent element of puzzle to it.’
    Hetherton’s lips moved, presumably to reiterate that he saw. Then he appeared to feel that such a bold claim might be unjustified: insight into the mind of a young man who motored about the country hoping for mysterious deaths ought not to be lightly claimed. ‘You interest me,’ he said carefully.
    ‘And the element of puzzle proved to be there. An obstinate puzzle, too. I’m carrying it about with me now and I’ve put it to you. Who would want to shoot a quiet fellow like that ? And yet this element – the intellectual element, you may term it – is not the thing’s main fascination. What I called its haunting quality comes from something else – comes from its power to impose itself as drama.’ Appleby paused and Hetherton saw his eyes light up. ‘Yes; the honest truth is in that. It was like going into a theatre and seeing a curtain – an object insignificant in itself – faintly stir in the dim light. It stirs because the ropes have taken a preliminary strain and it is about to rise. And one knows that on the other side is a great hinterland of drama. That is it. The death of Philip Ploss was like the stirring of such a curtain.’
    Hetherton, mildly surprised, did not fail to notice that his friend was surprised, too. In talk of this sort it was easy to guess, he did not commonly encourage himself. ‘And you say’ – Hetherton had some skill in prompting – ‘that the force of the situation lay in nothing appearing to be wrong?’
    ‘Largely in that. Listen. I motored down on Saturday afternoon. He lived much as one might suppose – a small manor house at Lark, on the slope of the Chilterns. A peaceful place. He was comfortably off but not wealthy, and he had cultivated his garden. Literally and in Marvell’s sense: as if his highest lot to plant the bergamot. And in Voltaire’s sense, too. Discreet cultivation all round. I went into a living-room first to see the doctor and the police down there. It’s interesting. I don’t know if you know his poetry, but it struck me that he must have confined himself within