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I can't tell you how I feel about it." "Rot," said Olva brusquely. "If you were less of an ass they wouldn't want to come round to your rooms so often." "I know," said Bunning. "I am an awful ass." He pushed his spectacles up his nose. "Why did you stop them coming?" he asked. "Simply," said Olva, "because it seems to me that ten men on to one is a rotten poor game."
Now he said gently "Tell me about yourself." Bunning gulped and gripped the baggy knees of his trousers. "I'm very unhappy," he said at last desperately "very. And if you hadn't come with me the other night to hear Med-Tetloe I'm sure I don't know why you did I shouldn't have come now " "Well, what's the matter?" Bunning's mouth was full of toast. "It was that night that service.
The wretched Bunning was swiftly regaining confidence. He was now, of course, about to plunge a great deal farther than was necessary and to burden Olva with sell-revelations and the rest. Olva hurriedly broke in "Well, come and see me when you want to. I've got a lot of work to do before Hall. But we'll go for a walk one day. . . ." Bunning was at once flung back on to his timid self.
That trembling ass, Bunning, singing now at the top of his voice, shaking with the fervour of it, let him know that he had brought a murderer to the sacred gathering again Olva had to concentrate all his mind, his force, his power upon the conquest of his nerves. For a moment it seemed as though he would lose all control; he stood, his knees quivering beneath him then strength came back to him.
Brent!" he exclaimed in hushed tones as he tiptoed nearer to the dead and the living. "What's all this? You found the Mayor dead you and Bunning? Why why " "We found him as you see him," answered Brent. "He's been murdered! There's no doubt about this, superintendent." Hawthwaite bent down fearfully towards the dead man, and then looked round at Bunning.
He climbed to his room, flung back his door and saw that his light was turned on. Facing him, waiting for him, was Bunning. "If you don't want me " he began with his inane giggle. "Sit down." Olva pulled out the whisky and two siphons of soda. "If I didn't want you I'd say so." He filled himself a strong glass of whisky and soda and began feverishly to drink. Bunning sat down.
"What is certain," observed Brent, "is that the murderer did get to the Mayor's Parlour. And what seems more important just now is the question how did he get away from it, unobserved? If Bunning is certain that no one entered by the front between my cousin's arrival and my coming, he is equally certain that no one left. Is it possible that anyone left by the police station entrance?"
He heard, in the Court below him, some men laughing a dog was barking. Then he saw that Bunning was on the edge of hysteria. The bedmaker would come in and find him laughing as he had laughed once before. Olva stilled the room with a tremendous effort the floor sank, the table and chairs tossed no longer. "Now, Bunning, tell me quickly. They'll be here to lay lunch in a minute.
"I won't go out of it," said Olva. "I'll write if you'd like and perhaps we'll meet. I'll be always your friend. And look here I'll tell Margaret Miss Craven about you, and she'll ask you to go and see her, and if you two are friends it'll be a kind of alliance between all of us, won't it?" Bunning was happier "Oh, but she'll think me such an ass!"
Into this Hand very gently, very tenderly, certain figures were drawn Mrs. Craven, Margaret, Rupert, Bunning, even Lawrence. Olva was dragging with him, into the heart of some terrible climax, these so diverse persons; he could not escape now other lives were twisted into the fabric of his own. And yet with this certainty of the futility of it, he must still struggle . . . to the very end.
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