These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.

Chapter VI.

Readers of the “Railways Magazine's” mastodonic thriller will no doubt remember the concluding few words of last month's chapter; but lest the continuity be lost, and for the benefit of those making their initial acquaintance with the circumstances, it may be well to recall the situation.

The inquest was almost concluded: indeed, the coroner was about to deliver his verdict, when Impskill rushed into court brandishing a dead llama by the tail. The llama's prayer wheel was tied neatly about its neck.

Impskill, still attired in V's, was about to be arrested for contempt when the milkmaid screamed and the camera exploded with astonishment.

Then a strange thing happened.

His tail coat fluttering in the breeze, his seedy topper far behind him, Stuart Bury, the Matamata mortician, dashed through the door and tumbled in a dead faint before the coroner.

“What's all this?” asked the astonished coroner. His question was soon answered.

After the undertaker stalked a grisly (no, gristly) figure. It was that of a strongly built but incredibly thin man, of about thirty-five years, with crinkly, auburn-tinted hair, a large head with an immense forehead, a clean-shaven face of strongly marked features—what was left of them, and clad in a winding sheet. Have you guessed? Of course you have—it was the corp—Lauder Redivivus!

After a moment of stupefaction the coroner, a stickler for precision, adjourned the inquest sine die. for, said he (admittedly a little shakily), there was no body to sit on.

Impskill, waving Dr. Brannigan's death certificate, started to protest, but a harsh voice struck terror into him and silenced him (the while Gillespie swore off beer). The spectre apparently thought there was somebody to sit on.

“Numskull!” croaked the Apparition impolitely, “Did you not know of the Wake? Are not pipe dreams the very rationalisation of logic compared with the delusions which obsess that goof Gillespie in his cups? And can you expect an innocent milk-bibbing dairymaid to suffer from anything but drunken visions after swilling beer all night? The whole thing's a plant. Be careful it doesn't grow. And, Numskull, remember! It was your idiocy that made it impossible for me to rest in my grave. What a distinction! Detective? Pah!”

As he spat out the last word the Spectre (a very solid Spectre, they said afterwards) turned on his heel and left the Courtroom. One of the reporters followed him to the door, but he appeared to have vanished.

Impskill tugged at the remainder of his beard with a trembling hand. He alone had not participated in the Bounty of the Wake the night before. But, alas, he had, in the aeroplane, been studying the occult. The llamas had taught him to umbilicate, and he had succeeded in hypnotising himself with his bottom waistcoat button. However, he scratched his head (repeated scratchings had made it “a little thin on top, sir”), and decided on a little blah for his reputation's sake. The whole thing, he informed the coroner, was a delusion. It reminded him irresistibly of the growing mango trick—it was nothing more than an hallucination. And at this moment Redmud Fillips came in. That wasn't, of course, his real name, but he was a yokel who spent his days in filliping mud at passers-by, hence the name. His testimony was to the effect that the corpse hadn't moved—he'd been filliping mud at the coffin all the afternoon, and the screws were all still in place. In his rustic way he seemed highly amused and let out a raucous horse laugh which rather wounded the susceptibilities of the coroner. He seemed inclined, too, to put the whole thing down to an excess of alcohol. The coroner, being unable to discover any precedent in his Justices' Manual, nor in Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence (of which Impskill carried a pocket edition in ten volumes—one for each pocket) held that the Court was still adjourned and must remain so, on the following grounds:

What they had seen was (a) Lauder alive, or (b) Lauder dead.

If it was Lauder alive there was no body to be sat upon.

If it was Lauder dead, there was no precedent covering the case; and, anyhow, Gillespie was not even yet perfectly sober and his testimony should not have been admitted in the first place.

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The coroner accordingly adjourned the Court, sending Dr. Brannigan to make a further examination, after which he was to get his original certificate of death cancelled and issue another, so soon as the cause of death should have been satisfactorily ascertained.

Impskill returned to his steel-lined study, nothing damped in ardour; though pricked, perhaps, a trifle in his vanity.

The great detective scratched his head—and inadvertently removed a wig he had adopted for disguise some six months before. A great weight seemed to fall from his skull, and a whirring as of many wings resounded in his ears. Stretching an eager hand for the telephone, he called Dr. Brannigan.

“Yes, Impskill?” said the doctor, as he recognised the detective's unmistakable accents.

Impskill unfolded his tale.

“Have you been suffering from mental lassitude lately?” asked the doctor.

“I never suffer from mental lassitude,” replied Lloyd haughtily.

“Put it differently, then. Have you been getting as good results as usual in your work?”

“No! And I can't understand it!”

“I can, Impskill,” purred the doctor, who had once been badly scared by the detective's chauffeur, “You've been placing too much reliance on other people's opinions. You let Gillespie make you take that case into Court—and against your better judgment.”

Impskill, remembering his discomfiture, and still feeling a bit sore at Gil., admitted that it was so.

“Then—don't clutter up your head with wigs. That's all that matters. As for the buzzing—well, you remember the old man in the limerick—

‘Two owls and a wren,
Two larks and a hen
Had all made their nests'” ….
But Lloyd had rung off. Who shall blame him?

The doctor, muttering something about genius and its kinship, resumed his occupation, feeling sure that the detective's great powers, so long in abeyance, would soon return in all their pristine vigour.

As indeed they did.

For Impskill, recumbent on the billiard table in his bullet-proof sanctum, was feeling drowsy. The patent clock, with its innumerable gadgets, ticked a gentle refrain, and Impskill was not sure whether he was awake or dreaming. Strange things happen during sleep. Might not Impskill wake with the solution ready to his hand? As he drowsed Impskill recapitulated the salient points of the case. Just as Morpheus was weighing down his eyelids, Gillespie appeared.

“Hullo, Gil.,” said Impskill.

“Hullo, yourself.”

“Where have you been?”

“Collecting the mail. Newspaper office—three months' accumulation. Home—three days. Friend's office—three years. Didn't answer any of them, of course.”

“No, of course,” agreed Impskill, and then rubbed his eyes, for a strange collection of people had followed Gillespie into the room. The first was “Kidney” Jenkinson, the Matamata butcher. Next was Dr. Brannigan, followed by Hilson Wogg, the head of the School of Criminology, walking side by side with H. E. Teaswell, the Toffee King, Stuart Bury, the mortician followed, with Redmud Fillips close behind, and in the rear was “Horsey” Stuart, in loud checks, clutching Percy Marris, the original suspect, by one arm, while Constable Fanning held the other. So far so good, but the frightening thing was that they were all pallid and spectral, and each was swathed about in a winding sheet. As they draped themselves funereally about the room another figure disclosed itself. It was Pat Lauder, similarly attired.

Gillespie vanished under the table.

To the astonishment of the famous crime-hound, the new arrivals draped themselves and their shrouds in the form of a pyramid, and commenced to enact the following little drama.

Pat Lauder (at the apex): “Who killed Pat Lauder?”

All: “Who killed Pat Lauder?”

Pat Lauder:

“I killed the corp and brought him here,
And left him gaily prattling
With a highly respectable auctioneer
Who promised a wake with plenty of beer,
Though his scared false teeth were rattling.”

(“Gracious,” thought Impskill, “I never really thought of suicide!”)

But the play continued.

Pat Lauder:

“What am I now?
Cold, I trow,
And dead enow.”

All:

“Dead, dead, dead.”

Dr. Brannigan:

“Clay, clay, clay.”

All:

“Ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya,”

(“Is this hell?” wondered Impskill—but was reassured by the sight of Gillespie's scared face peering out from under the table). The play went on.

Kidney Jenkinson:

“Dead enow,
Dead as a cow,
Bloodily slaughtered,
Carefully quartered,
Dead, I trow!”

Hilson Wogg:

“Remember, Impskill, the precepts I taught
In the little grey Crime books you cheaply bought,
The royal road of psychology
Is the key to real criminology.”

H. E. Teaswell:

“Ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya!
Teaswell's Tasty Toffee lurks
In the jaw that slowly works,
In the cavities of teeth,
On the tongue, and underneath!
Can a valid clue be here?
Is the case becoming clear?
Did he choke, you nincompoop,
Did he splutter on his soup,
Giving up his painful ghost,
Choking on a piece of toast?
Think, Impskill, if you can,
What did kill this hapless man?”

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Stuart Bury

“Ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya—
Clay, clay, clay;
Dust and ashes,
Let him rest
In peace and cinders,
Cease your quest
And all that hinders
His repose
For someone owes
Me some money
For his coffin
That's not funny ….”

All “Ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya!”

Redmud Fillips:

“Oh, Impskill is a famous man,
Impskill, Impskill,
Oh, Impskill is a famous man,
Praise our mighty Impskill!”

(“Very flattering,” thought the Master-Mind uneasily, “but not much help! Really, I can't afford to lose another case! But who's this?” For a new figure was opening its mouth and making efforts to speak. Marris of Matamata, the original suspect!)

Marris: “Don't you believe any of them! They're not saying anything definite, but just trying to mislead you with vague hints and half ….”

All: “Ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya, ya—ya—ya!”

Horsey Stuart: “Ya—ya—ya, Gee-up, four to one on Impskill! Four to one on Impskill! The Old Firm!”

P.C. Fanning: “'Ere, 'Ere, that ain't allowed. Can't 'ave none o' that! Move along there, move along!”

As the worthy constable was one of the supports of the pyramid, he was able to suit the action to the word, and the figures crashed to the ground. Impskill's nerves were no longer all they had been, and to avoid the sight of the impact of the shrouded bodies he screwed up his eyes as it became evident that the crash was imminent.

When he opened them again they had all vanished.

Impskill started to his feet.

“Gil.!” he yelled.

No answer.

He looked under the table.

Gil. had disappeared too!

“No matter,” registered the Master-Brain, “I don't need Gillespie for this.”

As he considered the problem he came to the conclusion that this sudden visitation had been of little real use. Then, suddenly, he realised that one thing did stick in his gizzard—Teaswell's Tasty Toffee. Had it stuck in Pat Lauder's gizzard too?

Hastily he went to the telephone and rang Matamata.

Within an hour a telegram arrived from the local sexton.

Lloyd, Wellington,—

Lauder still in coffin. Stop. Toffee in throat. Stop. Throat in advanced state of decomposition. Stop. Buryco Matamata.

“Solved” said Lloyd, and bunged in his report.

“I can't say I admire the New Zealand climate,” writes Mr. Reg. Airey in “Commerce,” “because it rained almost incessantly during my brief business visit. But one thing I did find to admire, and that was the New Zealand tobacco, and while at Napier, a flourishing North Island centre, and the headquarters of the toasted New Zealand tobacco industry, I was privileged to go over the extensive works of the Company (covering nearly four acres!) and see the whole process of manufacture, including the toasting of the matured leaf. It is this toasting process that differentiates the New Zealand from all other tobaccos. It purifies it so effectually by eliminating the nicotine that you can smoke any amount of it with impunity. The quality is unsurpassed by that of any tobacco I have ever smoked. There are only five of the genuine toasted brands, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold. The two latter make really choice cigarettes. Repeated attempts have been made to imitate these tobaccos, but the manufacturers are not worrying about that!”^*