He Who Whispers

Her white face, composed now, floated towards them.

“Ma'am,” said DR in a curious rumbling voice, “good evening.”

“Good evening.” Fay stopped short. “You are . . .?”

“Miss Seton,” introduced Miles, “this is an old friend of mine. Dr. Gideon Fell.”

“Oh, Dr. Gideon Fell.” She was silent for a moment, and then she spoke in a slightly different tone. “You caught the Six Ashes murderer,” she said. “And the man who poisoned all those people at Sodbury Cross.”

“Well . . .!” Dr. Fell seemed embarrassed. “I'm an old duffer, ma'am, who has had some experience with the ways of crime.”

Fay turned to Miles.

“I—wanted to tell you,” she said, in her usual soft voice of sincerity. “I made rather an exhibition of myself downstairs. I'm sorry. I was—upset. And I didn't even sympathize with what happened to poor Marion. Can't I be of service in any way?”

She moved tentatively towards the bedroom door not far behind her, but Miles touched her arm.

“Better not go in there. Professor Rigaud is acting as amateur doctor. He won't let anybody in.”

Slight pause.

“How—how is she?”

“A bit better, Rigaud thinks,” said Dr. Fell. “And that, ma'am brings us to a matter I should rather like to discuss with you.” He picked up his pipe from the window-sill. “If Miss Hammond recovers, this matter will of course be no concern of the police . . .”

“Won't it?” murmured Fay. And across her lips, in that unreal moonlit hall outside the bedroom door, flicked a smile which struck cold to the heart.

Dr. Fell's voice sharpened. “You believe the police should be concerned in this, ma'am?”

The curve of that terrifying smile, like a red gash in the face, was gone in a flash along with the glassy turn of the blue eyes.

“Did I say that? How stupid of me. I must have been thinking of something else. What did you want to know?”

“Well, ma'am! As a formality! Since you were the last person presumed to be with Marion Hammond before she lost consciousness . . .”

“I was? Why on earth should anyone think that?”

Dr. Fell regarded her in apparent perplexity.

“Our friend Hammond here,” he grunted, “has—harrumph--given me an account of a conversation you had with him down in the library earlier tonight. You remember that conversation.?”

“Yes.”

“At about half-past eleven, or thereabouts, Marion Hammond came into the library and interrupted you. Apparently you had given her a present of some kind. Miss Hammond said she had a present for you in return. She asked you to go on up to her room ahead of her, and said she she would join you after she'd had a word with her brother.” Dr. Fell cleared his throat. “You remember?”

“Oh. Yes! Yes, of course!”

“And therefore, presumably, you did go?”

“How stupid of me!--Yes, of course I dd.”

“Straight away, ma'am?”

Fay shook her head, rapt and intent on his words.

“No. I supposed Marion would have—personal things to talk over with Mr. Hammond there, and I thought it might be a little while before she left him. So first I went to my own room, and put on a nightgown and wrap and slippers. I came up here afterwards.”

“How long afterwards?”

“Ten of fifteen minutes, maybe. Marion had already got there before me.”

“And then?”

The moon was setting, its light grown thin. It was the turn of the night, the hour when to sick people death comes or passes by. All about them, south and east, towered the oaks and beeches of William the Conqueror's hunting forest, a forest old before him, seamed and withered with age; all night quiet, yet now subtly murmurous with a rising breeze. By moonlight the colour of Fay's moving lips.

“The present I had given Marion,” she explained, “was a little bottle of French perfume. Jolyeux number three.”

Dr. Fell put up a hand to his eyeglasses.

“Oh, ah? The same little red-and-gold bottle that's on the bedside table now?”

I—I suppose so.” There was that infernal smile again, curling. “Anyway, she put it on the bedside table by the lamp. She was sitting in a chair there.”

“And them?”

“It wasn't much, but she seemed awfully pleased. She gave me nearly a quarter of a pound of chocolates loose in a box. I have them downstairs in my room now.”

“And then?”

“I—I don't know what you want me to say, really. We talked. I was restless. I walked up and down . . .”

(Images crowded back into Miles Hammond's mind. As he himself had left the library, hours ago, he remembered glancing up and seeing a woman's shadow pass across the light, lonely against the screen of the New Forest.)

“Marion asked me why I was restless, and I said I didn't know. Mostly she did the talking, about her fiance and her brother and her plans for the future. The lamp was on the bedside table; did I tell you? And the bottle of perfume. All of a sudden, about midnight it was, she broke off and said there!--it was time we were both turning in and getting some sleep, so I wen downstairs to bed. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.”

“Miss Hammond didn't seem nervous or alarmed about anything?”

“Oh, no!”

Dr. Fell grunted. Dropping the dead pipe into his pocket, he deliberately removed his eyeglasses and held them a few feet away from his eyes, studying them with screwed-up face like a painter, though in that light he could scarcely have seen them at all. His wheezings and snortings, a sign of deep meditation, grew even louder.

“You know of course, that Miss Hammond was nearly frightened to death?”

“Yes. It must have been dreadful.”

“Have you any theory, then,” pursued Dr. Fell in exactly the same tone of voice, “to account for the equally mysterious death of Howard Brooke on Henri Quatre's tower nearly six years ago?”

Without gibing her time for a reply, still holding up the eyeglasses and appearing to scrutinize them with intense concentration, Dr. Fell added in an offhand tone:

“Some people, Miss Seton, are very curious correspondents. They will pour out in letters to people far away what they wouldn't dream of telling someone in the same town. You have—harrumph—perhaps noticed it?”

To Miles Hammond it seemed that the whole atmosphere of this interview had subtly changed. For Dr. Fell spoke again.

“Are you a good swimmer, Miss Seton?”

Pause.

“Fairly good. I daren't do much of it because of my heart.”

“But I should hazard a guess, ma'am, that if necessary you do not object to swimming under water?”

And now a wind came whispering and rustling, sinuously, through the forest; and Miles knew the atmosphere had changed. Not subtly, but on Fay Seton's part charged with emotion, perhaps deadly. It was the same silent outburst he had sensed and felt a while ago, in the kitchen, over boiling water. It engulfed the hall in an invisible tide. Fay knew. Dr. Fell knew. Fay's lips were drawn back from her teeth, and the teeth glittered.

It was then, as Fay took a blundering step backwards to get away from Dr. Fell, that the door to Marion's bedroom opened.

The opening of the door poured yellow light into the hall. Georges Antoine Rigaud, in his shirt-sleeves, regarded them in a state of near-raving.

“I tell you,” he cried out, “I cannot keep this woman's heart beating much longer. Where is that doctor? Why does not that doctor arrive? What is delaying . . .”

Professor Rigaud checked himself.

Past his shoulder, past a wide-open door, Miles by moving a little could see into the bedroom. He could see Marion, his own sister Marion, lying on a still more tumbled bed. The .32 revolver, useless against certain intruders, had slipped off the bed onto the floor. Marion's black hair was spread out on the pillow. Her arms were thrown wide, on sleeve pushed up where a hypodermic injection had been made in the arm. She had the aspect of a sacrifice.

In that moment, by a single gesture, terror rushed on them out of the New Forest.

For Professor Rigaud saw Fay Seton's face. And Georges Antoine Rigaud—Master of Arts, man of the world, tolerant watcher of human foibles—instinctively flung up his hand in the sign against the evil eye.

Chapter XII

Miles Hammond dreamed a dream.

Instead of being asleep at Greywood, on that Saturday night passing into Sunday morning—which was actually the ease—he dreamed that he was downstairs in the sitting-room, at night under a good lamp, seated in any easy-chair and taking notes from a large book.

The passage:

“In Slavonic lands popular folklore credits the vampire with existence merely as an animated corpse: that is, a being confined to its coffin by day, and emerging only after nightfall for its prey. In Western Europe, notably in France, the vampire is a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but capable during sleep or trance of projecting its soul in the form of straw or spinning mist to take visible bodily shape.”

Miles nodded as he underscored it.

“'Creberrima fama est mulique se expertos uel ab eis,' to quote a possible explanation of the origin of these latter, 'qui experto exxent, de quorum fie dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Sluanos et Panes, quos uulog incubos uocant, improbos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earun adpetisse ac ergisse concubitum, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur.'”

“I shall have to translate this,” Miles aid to himself in his dream. “I wonder if there's a Latin dictionary in the library.”

So he went into the library in search of a Latin dictionary. But he knew all along who would be waiting there.

During his work at Regency history Miles had for a long time been captivated by the character of Lady Pamela Hoyt, a sprightly court beauty of a hundred and forty years gone by, no better than she should be, and perhaps a murderess. In his dream he knew that in the library he would meet Lady Pamela Hoyt.

There was as yet no sense of fear. The library looked just as usual, with its dusty uneven piles of books round the floor. On one pile of books sat Pamela Hoyt, in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a high-waisted Regency gown of sprigged muslin. Across from her sat Fay Seton. Each one looked just as real as the other; he was conscious of nothing unusual.

“I wonder if you could tell me,” Miles said in his dream, “whether my uncle keeps a Latin dictionary here?”

He heard their reply soundlessly, if it can be expressed like that.

“I really don't think he does,” replied Lady Pamela politely, and Fay Seton shook her head too. “But you could go upstairs and ask him.”

There was a flash of lightning outside the windows. Suddenly Miles felt an intense reluctance to go upstairs and ask his uncle about a Latin dictionary. Even in the dream he knew his Uncle Charles was dead, of course; but that wasn't the reason for his reluctance. Th reluctance grew into terror, solidifying coldly through his veins. He wouldn't go! He couldn't go! Bu something impelled him to go. And all the time Pamela Hoyt an Fay Seton, with enormous eyes, sat perfectly motionless like wax dummies. There was a shaking crash of thunder . . .

Miles, with bright sunlight in his face, was shocked awake.

He sat up, feeling the arms of the chair on either side o him.

He was in the sitting-room downstairs, hunched up in the tapestry char by the fireplace. In a momentary backwash of the dream, wildly, he half expected to see Fay and dead Pamela Hoyt walk out of the library door over there behind him.

But here was the familiar room, with the Leonardo above the mantelpiece, and soft brilliant sunshine. An the telephone was ringing shrilly. The events of last night returned to Miles as he heard it ring.

Marion was safe. Safe, and going to get well. Dr. Garvice had said she was out of danger.

Yes! And Dr. Fell was asleep upstairs in his own room, and Professor Rigaud in Steve Curtis's: these being the only two other inhabitable bedrooms at Greywood. That was why he had dossed down here in the chair.

Greywood felt hushed, felt empty and new-washed, in a fresh morning stillness, though he could tell by the position of the sun that it must be past eleven o'clock. Still the telephone kept on clamouring on the wide window-sill. He stumbled over to to, stretching his muscles, and caught it up.

“May I speak to Mr. Miles Hammond?” said a voice. “This is Barbara Morell.”

Then Miles definitely became awake.

“Speaking,” he answered. “Are you—I asked you this once before—by any chance a mind-reader?”

“What's that?”

Miles sat down on the floor with his back to the wall under the windows: not a dignified position, but it gave him a sense of siting across from the speaker for a heart-to-heart talk.

“If you hadn't rung me,” he went on, “I was going to try to get in touch with you.”

“Oh? Why?”

For some reason it gave him extraordinary pleasure to hear her voice. There was no subtlety, he reflected, about Barbara Morell. Simply because she had played that trick with the Murder Club, it showed her as transparent as a child.

“Dr. Fell is here. . . . No, no, he's not annoyed about it! He hasn't so much as mentioned the club! . . . Last night he tried to make Fay Seton admit something, and he had no success. He says now you're our last hope. He says that if you don't help us we may b dished.”

“I don't think,” Barbara's voice said doubtfully, “you're making yourself very clear.”

“Look here! Listen! If I came in to town this afternoon, could I possibly see you?”

Pause.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“This is Sunday. I think there's a train,” he searched his memory, “at half-past one. Yes, I'm sure there's a train at half-past one. It takes roughly two hours. Where could I see you?”

Barbara seemed to be debating.

“I could meet your train at Waterloo. Then we might have tea somewhere.”

“Excellent idea!” All last night's bewilderment swept over him. “The only thing I can tell you now is that there was a very bad business here last night. Something happened in my sister's room that seems past human belief. If we can only find an explanation . . .”

Miles glanced up.

Stephen Curtis—sober-faced, conscientiously correct from his hat to his grey double-breasted suit, carrying a rolled umbrella over his arm—Stephen Curtis, coming in at a jaunty pace from the reception-hall, caught the last words and stopped short.

Miles had dreaded telling Steve, dreaded telling the mental counterpart of Marion. It was all right now, of course. Marion wasn't going to die. At the same time, he spoke hastily to the telephone.

“Sorry I have to ring off now, Barbara. See you later.” And he hung up.

Stephen, his forehead growing faintly worried, contemplated his future brother-in-law sitting on the floor: unshaven, wild and tousle-headed.

“Look here, old man . . .”

“It's all right!” Miles assured him, springing to his feet. “Marion's had a very bad time of it, but she's going to get well. Dr. Garvice says . . .”

“Marion?” Steve's voice went high, and all the colour drained out of his face. “What is it? What's happened?”

“Something or someone got into her room last night, and frightened her very nearly to death. But she'll be as right as rain in two or three days, so you're not to worry.”

For a few seconds, while Miles could not meet his eye, neither of them spoke. Stephen walked forward. Stephen, that self-controlled man, fastened sinewy fingers round the handle of his rolled umbrella; deliberately he lifted the umbrella high in the air; deliberately he brought it down with a smash on the edge of the table under the windows.

The umbrella subsided, bent metal and broken ribs amid black cloth; a useless heap, an inanimate object that for some reason looked pitiful like the body of a shot bird.

“It was that damned librarian, I suppose?” Stephen asked almost calmly.

“Why should you say that?”

“I don't know. But I knew at the station yesterday, I felt it in my bones, I tried to warn you both, that there was trouble coming. Some people cause something-or-other wherever they go.” A blue, congested vein showed at his temple. “Marion!”

“We owe her life, Steve, to a man named Professor Rigaud. I don't think I've told you about him. Don't wake him now; he's had a long night of it; but he's asleep in your room.”

Stephen turned away. He walked over to the line of low white-painted bookshelves along the west wall, with the big framed portraits over them. He stood there with his back to Miles, his hands spread out on the shelf-top. When he turned round a little later Miles saw, with acute embarrassment, that there were tears in his eyes.

Both of them suddenly spoke with desperation of trivialities.

“Did you—er--just get here?” asked Miles.

“Yes. Caught the nine-thirty from town.”

“Crowded?”

“Fairly crowded. Where is she?”

“Upstairs. She's asleep now.”

“Can I see her?”

“I don't know any reason why not. I tell you, she's all right! But go quietly; everybody else is in bed.”

Everybody else, however, was not in bed. As Stephen turned towards the door to the reception hall, there appeared in the doorway the vastness of Dr. Fell, carrying a cup of tea on a tray and looking as though he did not quite know how it had got there.

Ordinarily it would have been as startling to Stephen Curtis to find an unexplained guest in the house as to find a new member of the family at breakfast. Now, however, he hardly noticed Dr. Fell; the presence of someone else only served as a reminder that he was still wearing his hat. Stephen turned in the doorway. He swept off his hat. He looked at Miles. Nearly bald, even his fair moustache seeming disarranged, Stephen struggled for words.

“You and your damned Murder Club!” he said clearly and viciously.

Then he was gone.

Dr. Fell, clearing his throat, lumbered forward hesitantly with the tea on the tray.

“Good morning,” he rumbled. He looked uncomfortable. “That was—?”

“Steve Curtis. Yes.”

“I—ah--made this tea for you,” said Dr, extending the tray. “I made it all right,” he added argumentatively. “And then it seems to me I began concentrating on something else, so that some half an hour elapsed before I put in the milk. I greatly fear it may be cold.”

This remark was both made and received in perfect seriousness, since both Dr. Fell and Miles were otherwise preoccupied.

“That's all right,” said Miles. “Thanks very much.”

He gulped down the tea, and then put cup and tray on the floor beside him as he sat down in the big chair by the fireplace. Miles was steeling himself for the outburst he knew must come, the admission he was compelled to make.

“This whole situation,” he said, “is my fault.”

“Steady!” said Dr. Fell sharply.

“It's my fault, Dr. Fell. I invited Fay Seton here. The good Lord alone knows why I dd; but there you are. You heard what Steve said?”

“Which part of what he said?”

“'Some people cause something-or-other wherever they go.'”

“Yes. I heard it.”

“We were all worked up and overwrought last night,” Miles went on. “When Rigaud made that sign against the evil eye, I shouldn't have been surprised to see hell open. In daylight”--he nodded towards the grey and green and sun-gold forest through the eastern windows—“it's hard to be afraid of vampire-teeth. And yet . . .something. Something that troubles the waters. Something that troubles the waters. Something that brings pain and disaster to whatever it touches. Do you understand?”

“Oh, ah. I understand. But before you blame yourself--”

“Well?”

“Hadn't we better be sure,” said Dr. Fell, “that Miss Fay Seton is the person who troubles the waters?”

Miles sat up straight with a jerk.

Dr. Fell, peering sideways at him past the crooked eyeglasses, with a look of Gargantuan distress on his face, fished in the pockets of a baggy alpaca coat. He produced the meerschaum and filled it from an obese pouch. With some effort he lowered himself into a big chair, spreading out over it; he struck a match and lighted the pipe.

“Sir,” he continued, firing up himself as he blew out smoke, “I could not credit Rigaud's vampire theory from the time I read his manuscript yesterday. I could credit, mind you, a vampire who materialized in the daytime. I could even credit a vampire who killed with a sword-stick. But I could not credit, not at any time, a vampire who pinched somebody's brief-case containing money.

“That jarred my sense of the fitness of things. That somehow failed to convince. And late last night, when you told me Fay Seton's own story—including, by the way, a point which is not in the manuscript—I had a vision. Through the whole business I saw not real devilishness, but human devilishness.

“Then came the frightening of your sister.

“And that was different, by thunder! That was the authentic touch of Satan. It still is.

“Until we know what was in the room, or what was outside the window, we can't give any king of final verdict on Fay Seton. These two events, the murder of the tower and the frightening of your sister are connected. They interlock. They depend on each other. And they both in some fashion centre round this odd girl with the red hair.” He was silent for a moment. “Forgive the personal question; but do you happen to be in love with her?”

Miles looked him in the eyes.

“I don't know,” he replied honestly. “She . . .”

“Disturbs you?”

“That's putting it mildly.”

“Supposing her to be—harrumph!--a criminal of some kind, natural or supernatural, would that have any influence on your attitude?”

“For the love of Mike, are you warning me against her too?”

“No!” thundered Dr. Fell. And made a hideous face and smote his fist on the arm of the chair with remarkable vehemence. “On the contrary! If one wool-gathering idea of mine is correct, there are many persons who ought to get down in the dust and beg her pardon. No, sir: I put the question in what Rigaud would call an academic way. Would this (shall we say) make any difference to your attitude?”

“No, I can't say it would. We don't fall in love with a woman because of her good character.”

“That,” said Dr. Fell, taking a number of reflective puffs at the meerschaum, “is an observation none the less true for not being generally admitted. At the same time, this whole situation disturbs me even more. One person's motive (forgive me if I seem cryptic) seems to make nonsense of another person's motive.

“I questioned Miss Seton last night,” he continued, “and I hinted. Today I propose to question her without hints. But I fear it won't be any good. The best thing to do is perhaps to get in touch with Miss Barbara Morell . . .”

“Wait a minute!” Miles rose to his feet. “We've got in touch with Barbara Morell! She rang up here not five minutes before you came in!”

“So?” observed Dr. Fell, instantly alert. “What did she want?”

“Come to think of t,” said Miles, “I haven't the remotest idea. I forgot to ask her.”

Dr. Fell eyed him for a long moment.

“My boy,” Dr. Fell said with an expansive sigh, “it is more and more borne in on me that you and I are spiritually kin. I refrain from making frantic comments; that is the sort of thing I always do myself. But what did you say? did you ask her about Jim Morell?”

“No. Steve Curtis came in just then, and I didn't have time. But I remembered you said it might help us to get the information, so I've arranged to see her today in town. I might as well,” Miles added bitterly. “Dr. Garvice is getting a nurse for Marion, an everyone claims I'm in the way in addition to being the pigheaded swine who introduced the disturbing element into the house.”

Miles was getting lower and lower, blacker and blacker, in his mind and spirit.

“Fay Seton's not guilty!” he shouted; and he might have gone on to enlarge on this if Dr. Laurence Garvice himself, with a bowler hat in one hand and a medicine-case in the other, had no put his head in at the doorway to the reception hall.

Dr. Garvice, a middle-aged, pleasant-faced man with a grizzled head and a scrubbed antiseptic manner, obviously had something on his mind. He hesitated before coming in.

“Mr. Hammond,” he said, giving a half-smile to Miles and Dr. Fell, “before I see the patient again, I wonder if I could have a word with you?”

“Yes, of course. Don't hesitate to speak in front of Dr. Fell.”

Dr. Garvice closed the door behind him and turned round.

“Mr. Hammond,” he said, “I wonder whether you would mind telling me what frightened the patient?”

Then he held up his hand with the bowler hat.

“I ask,” he went on, “because this is the worst case of plain nervous shock in my experience. That's to say: there's often, nearly always, severe shock attendant on physical injury. But there's no physical injury of any kind.” He hesitated. “Is the lady of a highly strung type?”

“No,” sad Miles. He felt his throat contract.

“No, I shouldn't have thought so myself. Medically she's as sound as a bell.” There was a little pause, faintly sinister. “Apparently someone tried to get at her from outside the window?”

“That's the trouble, Doctor. We don't know what happened.”

“Oh, I see. I was hoping you could tell me.--There's no other sign of . . . burglars being here?”

“None that I've noticed.”

“Have you informed the police?”

“Good God, no!” Miles blurted this out, and then steadied himself to casualness. “You can understand, Doctor, that we don't want the police mixed up in this.”

“Yes. No doubt.” With his eye on the pattern of the carpet, Dr. Garvice slowly tapped his bowler hat against his leg. “The lady doesn't suffer from—hallucinations?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Well,” and the physician lifted his eyes, “she keeps on muttering, over and over, about something whispering to her.”

“Whispering?”

“Yes. It rather worries me.”

“But 'whispering,' someone whispering to her, couldn't have caused . . .?”

“No, Exactly what I thought myself.”

Whispering . . .

The eerie word, with its sibilant note, seemed to hang in the are between them. Dr. Garvice still tapped his bowler hat slowly against his leg.

“Well!: He woke up and looked at his wrist-watch. “I dare say we shall find out soon enough. In the meantime, as I told you last night, there's nothing to worry about. I was lucky enough to get a nurse, who's outside now.” Dr. Garvice turned towards the door. “It's very disturbing, though,” he added. “I'll look in again when I've seen the patient. And I'd better look in on the other lady too—Miss Seton, isn't it? She didn't seem, last night, to have as much blood-colour in her as she should have. Excuse me.”

And the door closed after him.

Chapter XIII

“I suppose,” Miles remarked mechanically, “I'd better go and see about breakfast for all of us.” But he took only two steps toward the dining-room. “Whispering!” he said. “Dr. Fell, what is the answer to all this?”

“Sir,” returned Dr. Fell, “I don't know.”

“Does it give you a clue of any kind?”

“Unfortunately, no. The vampire—”

“Need we use that word?”

“The vampire, in folk-lore, whispered softly to her victim at the beginning of the influence that threw the victim into a trance. But the point is that no vampire, real or faked, no sort of imitation bogy at all, would have had the least effect on your sister. That is correct?”

“I'd swear to it. Last night I gave you an instance to prove it. For Marion”--he tried to find the right words--”such things just didn't enter her mind.”

“You'd call her completely unimaginative?”

“That's a strong word to use about anybody. But certainly she's completely contemptuous of that. When I tried to talk to her about the supernatural, she made me sound foolish even to myself. And when I talked about Count Cagliostro . . .”

“Cagliostro?” Dr. Fell blinked at him. “Apropos of what? Oh, ah! I see! Rigaud's book?”

“Yes. According to Fay Seton, Marion seems to have got a quite sincere if hazy idea that Cagliostro was a personal friend of mine.”

Dr. Fell's scatterbrain had been set off again. He leaned back in the chair, his pipe gone out, and dreamily contemplated a corner of the ceiling for so long a time that Miles thought he must be a victim of catalepsy until Miles saw the far-away twinkle which began in the doctor's eyes, the vast sleepy beam which overspread his face, the series of chuckles which gradually ran up the ridges of his waistcoat.

“It's a fascinating subject, you know,” mused Dr. Fell.

“Vampires?” said Miles bitterly.

“Cagliostro,” replied Dr. Fell.

He gestured with the pipe.

“Now there is a historical character,” he continued, “whom I have always detested and yet obscurely admired. The tubby little Italian, the eye-roller, 'Count Front-of-Brass,' who claimed to be two thousand years old from drinking his own elixir of life! The wizard, the alchemist, the healer! Moving across the screen of the late eighteenth century in a red waistcoat covered with diamonds! Aweing kings' courts from Paris to St. Petersburg! Founding his cult of Egyptian Masonry, to which women were admitted, and addressing his female disciples with everybody in puris natuarlibus! Making gold! Prophesying the future! And, incredibly, getting away with it!

“The man was never exposed, you remember. His ruin came about through the business of Marie Antoinette's diamond necklace, in which the count had no concern whatever.

“But I think his most intriguing exploit was his Banquet of the Dead, at the mysterious house in the rue St. Claude, where the ghosts of six great men were gravely summoned from the shadows to sit down at dinner with six living guests.

“'At first,' writes one biographer, 'conversation did not flow freely.' This seems to me one of the classic understatements. My own conversation would have dried up, would positively have petrified, if I found myself at a dinner-table requesting Voltaire to pass the salt or asking the Duc de Choiseul how he liked the quality of the spam. And at this dinner the ghosts themselves seem to have been rather embarrassed as well, to judge by the quality of their talk.

“No, sir. Let me repeat that I don't like Count Cagliostro; I dislike his swagger as I dislike any man's swagger. But I will concede that he had a notion of doing things handsomely. England too, that home of quacks and imposters, has a great claim on him.”

Miles Hammond, professionally interested in spite of himself, interjected a protest.

“England?” Miles repeated. “Did you say England?”

“I did.”

“If I remember correctly, Cagliostro dis visit London on two occasions. They were very unfortunate occasions for him . . .”

“Ah!” agreed Dr. Fell. “But it was in London that he was initiated into the secret society which gave him the idea for his own secret society later. The present-day Magic Circle ought to go round to Gerrard Street, to what used to be the king's Head Tavern; and put up a plaque. Gerrard Street! Oh, ah! Yes! Very close, by the way, to Beltring's Restaurant where we were to meet two night ago, and Miss Barbara Morell said . . .”

Suddenly Dr. Fell paused.

His hands went to his forehead. The meerschaum pipe dropped unheeded out of his mouth, bounced against his knee, and rolled to the floor. Afterwards he seemed to congeal into a figure so motionless that not even a wheeze of breath could be hear.

“Pray forgive me,” he said presently, and took his hands away from his forehead. “Absence of mind has some use in this world after all. I think I've got it.”

“Got what?” Miles shouted.

“I know what frightened your sister.--Let me alone for a moment!” Dr. Fell pleaded, with a wild look and an almost piteous voice. “Her body was relaxed! Completely relaxed! We saw it for ourselves! And yet at the same time . . .”

“Well? What about it?”

“Done by design,” Dr. Fell said. “Done by deliberate, brutal design.” He looked startled. “And that must mean, God help us, that--!”

Again realization came into his mind, realization of something else, this time slowly, like an exploring light from room to room. It was as though Miles could follow the workings of his brain, read the moving eyes (for Dr. Fell has not a poker face) without seeing quite past that last nightmarish door to what lay beyond.

“Let's go upstairs,” Dr. Fell said at length, “and see if there is any proof that I'm right.”

Miles nodded. In silence he followed Dr. Fell, who now leaned heavily on his crutch-handled stick, up to Marion's bedroom. From the doctor radiated a shaggy glow of certainty, a fiery energy, which made Miles sure that a barrier had been passed. Henceforward, Miles felt, there was danger. Henceforward they were racing towards trouble. Here's a malignant force, and Dr. Fell knows what it is; we'll kill it, or it will kill us, but look to yourself!--because the game has begun.

Dr. Fell tapped at the bedroom door, which was opened by a youngish nurse in uniform.

Inside the room was dim and a little stuffy, despite sunlight and clean air. The thin blue, gold-figured curtains had been drawn across both sets of windows; and with black-out curtains removed weeks ago, a faint dazzle of sun showed beyond. Marion asleep, lay tidily in a tidy bed and room which showed already the touch of the professional nurse. The nurse herself carrying a hand wash-basin, moved back from opening the door. Stephen Curtis, a pitiable man, stood with hunched shoulders by the chest-of-drawers. And Dr. Garvice, who was just on the point of leaving after his examination, looked round in surprise.

Dr. Fell walked up to him.

“Sir,” he began in a voice which arrested the attention of everyone there, “last night you did me the honour to say you were familiar with my name.”

The other bowed, faintly inquiring.

“I am not,” said Dr. Fell, “a physician; nor have I any medical knowledge beyond that which might be possessed by any man in the street. You may refuse the request I am about to make. You would have every right to do so. But I should like to examine your patient.”

And now showed the inner, troubled state of Dr. Laurence Garvice's mind. He glanced towards the bed.

“Examine the patient?” Dr Garvice repeated.

“I should like to examine her neck and her teeth.”

Pause.

“But, my dear sir!” protested the physician, his voice going up loudly before he checked it. “There isn't a wound or a mark anywhere on the lady's body!”

“Sir,” replied Dr. Fell, “I am aware of that.”

“And if you're thinking of a drug, or something like that . . .!”

“I know,” announced Dr. Fell carefully, “that Miss Hammond was not physically hurt. I know that no question arises of a drug or any king of toxic agent. I know her condition is caused by fear and nothing else. But still I should like to examined the neck and teeth.”

The physician made a half-helpless gesture with his bowler hat.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Miss Peters! You might open the curtains just a little. Please excuse me. I'm off to look in on Miss Seton downstairs.”

Yet he lingered in the doorway as Dr. Fell approached the bed. It was Stephen Curtis after glancing in bewilderment at Miles an receiving only a shrug for reply, who twitched back a few inches one of the curtains on the south windows. A little light ran lengthways across the bed. Otherwise they stood in a bluish-coloured dusk, motionless, with birds bickering outside, while Dr. Fell bent over.

Miles couldn't see what he was doing. His broad back hid all that was visible of Marion above the blanket and the neat fold of the top sheet. Nor was there any sign of movement from Marion.

Somebody's watch—in fact, Dr. Garvice's wrist-watch—could be heard ticking distinctly.

“Well?” Dr. Garvice prompted. He stirred with impatience in the doorway. “Have you found anything?”

“No!” said Dr. Fell despairingly, and straightened up and put his hand on the crutch-handled stick propped against the bed. He turned round. He began, muttering to himself and holding fast his eyeglasses with his left hand, to peer at the carpet round the edges of the bed.

“No,” he added, “I haven't found anything.” He stared straight ahead of him. “Stop a bit, though! There is a test! I can't remember the name of it offhand; but, by thunder, there is a test! It will prove definitely . . .”

“Prove what?”

“The presence of an evil spirit,” said Dr. Fell.

There was a slight rattle as Nurse Peters handled the wash-basin. Dr. Garvice kept his composure.

“You're joking, of course. And in any case”--his voice became brisk—“I'm afraid I can't allow you to disturb the patient any longer. You'd better come along too, Mr. Curtis!”

And he stood to one side like a shepherd while Dr. Fell, Miles, and Stephen filed out. Then he closed the door.

“Sir,” sad Dr. Fell, impressively lifting his crutch-handled stick and tapping it against the air, “the whole joke in that I am not joking. I believe—harrumph--you said you were on your way down to see Miss Fay Seton. She isn't by any chance ill, is she?”

“Oh, no. The lady was a bit nervy early this morning and I gave her a sedative.”

“Then I wonder if you will ask Miss Seton, at her convenience to come and join us here in the upstairs hall? Where,” said Dr. Fell, “we had a very interesting talk last night. Will you convey that message?”

Dr. Garvice studied him from under grizzled eyebrows.

“I don't understand what's going on here,” he stated slowly. He hesitated. “Maybe it's just as well I don't understand.” He hesitated again. “I'll convey your message. Good day.”

Miles watched him go at his unhurried pace down the hall. Then Miles shook the arm of Stephen Curtis.

“Hang it all, Steve!” he said to a man who was standing against the wall hump-shouldered, like an object hung on a hat-peg, “you've got to brace up! There's no sense in taking this so hard as all that! You must have heard the doctor say Marion's in no danger! After all, she's my sister!”

Stephen straightened up.

“No,” he admitted in his slow voice. “I suppose not. But then after all she's only your sister. And she's my . . . my . . .”

“Yes. I know.”

“That's the whole point, Miles. You don't know. You never have been very fond of Marion, have you? But, speaking of being concerned about people, what about you and this girlfriend of yours? The librarian?”

“Well, what about us?”

“She poisoned somebody, didn't she?

“What do you mean, she poisoned somebody?”

“When we were having tea at Waterloo yesterday,” said Stephen, “it seems to me Marion said this Fay What's-he-name was guilty of poisoning somebody.” Her Stephen began to shout. “You wouldn't give two hoots about you own sister, would you? No! But you would care everything in the world, you would upset everything and everybody, for an infernal little slut you picked up out of the gutter to--”

“Steve! Take it easy! What's wrong?”

A shocked, startled look passed slowly over Stephen Curtis's face, showing consternation in the eyes.

His mouth fell open under the fair moustache. He put a hand to his necktie, fingering it. He shook his head as though to clear something away. When he spoke again it was in a voice of contrition.

“Sorry, old man,” Stephen muttered, and punched in an embarrassed way at Miles' arm. “Can't think what came over me. Wouldn't have said that for worlds! But you know how it is when something funny happens and you can't understand any of it. I'm going to go and lie down.”

“Wait a minute! Come back! Not in that room!”

“What do you mean, not in that room?”

“Not in your own bedroom, Steve! Professor Rigaud's trying to get some sleep in there, and . . .”

“Oh, so-and-so to Professor Rigaud!” sad Stephen and bolted down the back stairs like a man pursued.

The troubling of the waters again!

Now, Miles thought, it had reached out and touched Steve as well. It seemed to colour every action and inspire every thought here at Greywood. He still refused, fiercely refused, to believe anything whatever against Fay Seton. But what had Dr. Fell meant by that remark about an evil spirit? Surely to heaven it wasn't intended to be taken quite literally? Miles swung around, to find Dr. Fell's gaze fixed on him.

“You are wondering,” inquired Dr. Fell, “what I want with Miss Seton? I can tell you very simply. I want the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“The truth,” returned Dr. Fell, “about Howard Brooke's murder and the fright-bogy of last night. And she can't, for her soul's sake she daren't, evade questions now. I think we shall have it settled in a very few minutes.”

They heard quick footsteps on the distant front stairs. A figure appeared at the other end of the long, narrow hall. When Miles saw that it was Dr. Laurence Garvice, when he saw Dr. Garvice's hastened stride, he had one of those inspired premonitions which can fly to the heart of truth.

It seemed a very long time before the physician reached them.

“I thought I'd better come up and tell you,” he announced. “Miss Seton is gone.”

Dr. Fell's crutch-handled stick dropped with a clatter on the bare boards.

“Gone?” His voice was so husky that he had to clear his throat.

“She—er--left this for Mr. Hammond,” said Garvice. “At least,” he amended hastily, “I assume she's gone. I found this,” he held up a sealed envelope, “propped up against the pillow in her bedroom.”

Miles took the envelope, which was addressed to him in a fine, clear, sharp-pointed handwriting. He turned it over in his fingers, momentarily without the courage to open it. But when he did grit his teeth and tear ope the envelope, he was a little reassured by the contents of the folded note inside.

DEAR MR. HAMMOND,

I am sorry to say I shall have to be absent in London today on a matter that compels attention. I think now I was wise to keep my little room in town. And a brief-case is so useful, isn't it? But don't worry. I shall return after nightfall.

Yours sincerely,

Fay Seton.

The sky , which had been fine, was clouding over with little smoky wisps of black: a moving sky, an uneasy sky. Miles held the letter close to the window, and read it aloud. That was when the ominous word “brief-case” stuck out at him.

“Oh, my God!” breathed Dr. Fell. He said this very simply, as a man might witness ruin or tragedy. “And yet I ought to have guessed it. I ought to have guessed it. I ought to have guessed it!”

“But what's wrong?” demanded Miles. “Fay says she'll be back after nightfall.”

“Yes. Oh, ah. Yes.” Dr. Fell rolled his eyes. “I wonder what time she left here? I WONDER what time she left here?”

“I don't know,” said Garvice hastily. “Don't look at me!”

“But somebody must have seen her go!” bellowed Dr. Fell. “A conspicuous girl like that? Tall, red-haired, probably wearing . . .”

The door to Marion's bedroom opened, Miss Peters, putting her head out in protest against the noise, saw Dr. Garvice and stopped short.

“Oh. Didn't know you were here, Doctor,” the nurse said pointedly, in a small reproving voice. Afterwards, moved by human curiosity, she wavered. “Pardon me. If you're looking for a woman of that description . . .”

Dr. Fell wheeled round in vastness.

“Yes?”

“I think maybe I saw her,” the nurse informed him.

“When?” roared Dr. Fell. The nurse shied back. “Where?”

“Nearly—nearly three-quarters of an hour ago, when I was coming here on my bicycle. She was getting on the bus out in the main road.”

“A bus,” demanded Dr. Fell, “that would take her to Southampton Central railway station? Oh, ah! And what train to London could she catch by taking the bus?”

“Well, there's the one-thirty,” replied Garvice. “She could make that one comfortably.”

“The one-thirty?” echoed Miles Hammond. “But that's the train I'm taking! I intended to get the bus that would . . .”

“You mean that wouldn't,” corrected Garvice with a rather strained smile. “You'll never make that train by bus, even by private car unless you drove like Sr Malcolm Campbell. It's ten minutes past one now.”

“Listen to me,” said Dr. Fell in a voice he very seldom used. His hand fell on Miles' shoulder. “You are going to catch that one-thirty train.”

“But that's impossible! There's a man who does a car-hire service to and from the station—Steve always uses him—but it would take too long to get him here. It's out of the question!”

“You forget,” said Dr. Fell, “that Rigaud's illegally borrowed car is still outside in the drive.” There was a wild, strained look in his eyes. “Listen to me!” he repeated. “It is absolutely vital for you to overtake Fay Seton. Absolutely vital. Are you willing to have a shot at catching the train?”

“Hell, yes. I'll drive her at ninety an hour. But suppose I do miss the train?”

“I don't know!” roared Dr. Fell as though in physical pain, and hammered his fist against his temple. “This 'little room in town' she speaks about. She's going there—yes, of course she is! Have you got her London address?”

“No. She came straight to me from the employment agency.”

“in that case,” said Dr. Fell, “you have simply got to catch the train. I'll explain as much as possible while we run. But something damnable is going to happen, I warn you here and now, if that woman tries to carry out her plans. It is quite literally a matter of life and death. You have got to catch that train!”

Chapter XIV

The guard's whistle piped shrilly.

Two or three last doors slammed. The one-thirty train to London, smoothly gliding, drew out of Southampton Central Station and gathered speed so that its windows seemed to flash past.

“You can't do it, I tell you!” panted Stephen Curtis.

“Want to bet?” Miles said through his teeth. “Drive the car back, Steve. I'm all right now.”

“Never jump on a train when it's going as fast as that!” yelled Stephen. “Never . . .”

The voice receded. Miles was running blindly beside the door of a first-class smoking compartment. He dodged a luggage-truck, with someone shouting at him, and laid hold of the door-handle. Since the train was on his let-hand side as he ran, the jump wasn't going to be easy.

He yanked open the door, felt through his back the terrifying crick-crack twinge of overbalancement as he jumped, saved himself by a reeling catch at the side of the door, and, with the dizziness of his old illness pouring through his head, slammed the door behind him.

He had made it. He was on the same train with Fay Seton. Miles stood at the open window, panting and half-blind, staring out and listening to the click of the wheels. When he had partly got his breath he turned round.

Ten pairs of eyes regarded him with barely concealed loathing.

The first-class compartment, nominally built to seat six persons, now held five squeezed in on each side. To railway travellers there is always something infuriating about a late arrival who gets in at the last moment, and this was a particularly bad case. Though no one said anything, the atmosphere was glacial except for a stoutish Waaf who gave him a glance of encouragement.

“I—er--beg you pardon,” said Miles.

He wondered vaguely whether he ought to add a maxim from the letters of Lord Chesterfield, some little apothegm of this sort; but he sense the atmosphere and in any case he had other things to worry about.

Miles stumbled hastily across feet, gained the door to the corridor, went out and closed it behind him and a general wave of thankfulness. Here he stood considering. He was reasonably presentable, having sloshed water on his face and scraped himself raw with a dry razor, though his empty stomach cried aloud. But this wasn't important.

The important thing was to find Fay immediately.

It was not a long train, and not very crowded. That is to say, people were packed into seats trying to read newspapers with their hands flat against their breasts like corpses; dozens stood in the corridor amid barricades of luggage. But few were actually standing inside the compartments except those fat women with third-class tickets who go and stand in first-class compartments, radiating reproachfulness, until some guilty-feeling male gives them his seat.

Working his way along the corridors, tripping over luggage, becoming entangled with people queuing for lavatories, Miles tried to work out a philosophical essay in his mind. He was watching, he said to himself, a whole cross-section of England as the rain rattled and swayed, and the green countryside flashed by, and he peered into one compartment after another.

But, in actual fact, he wasn't feeling philosophical.

After a first quick journey he was apprehensive. After a second he was panicky. After a third . . .

For Fay Seton was not aboard the train.

Steady, now! Don't get the wind up!

Fay's got to be here!

But she wasn't.

Miles stood in a corridor midway along the length of the train, gripping the window-raining and trying to keep calm. The afternoon had grown warmer and darker, in black smoky clouds that seemed to mix with the smoke of the train. Miles stared out of the window until the moving landscape blurred. He was seeing Dr. Fell's frightened face, and hearing Dr. Fell's voice.

That “explanation,” delivered by the doctor in a vacant undertone while engaged in cramming biscuits into Miles' pockets to take the place of breakfast, had not been very coherent.

“Find her and stay with her! Find her and stay with her!” That had been the burden of it. “If she insists on coming back to Greywood tonight, that's all right—in fact, it's probably the best thing—but stay with her and don't leave her side for a minute!”

“Is she in danger?”

“In my opinion, yes,” said Dr. Fell. “And if you want to see her proved innocent of”--he hesitated—“of at least the worst charge against her, for the love of heaven don't fail me!”

The worst charge against her?

Miles shook his head. The jerk of the train swayed and roused him. Fay had either missed the train—which seemed incredible, unless the bus had broken down—or, more probably, she had turned back after all.

And here he was speeding away in the opposite direction, away from whatever might be happening. But . . . hold on! Here was a hopeful point! . . . the “something damnable” Dr. Fell had predicted seemed to concern what would occur if Fay went to London and returned to carry out her plans. That meant there was nothing to worry about. Or did it?

Miles could never remember a longer journey. The train was an express; he couldn't have got out to turn back if he had wanted to. Rain-ships stung the windows. Miles got entangled with a family party which overflowed from compartment into corridor like a camp-fire group, and remembered that its sandwiches were in a suitcase under a mountainous pile of somebody else's luggage, and for a time created the general wild aspect of moving-day. It was twenty minutes to four when the train drew in at Waterloo.

Waiting for him, just outside the barrier, stood Barbara Morell.

The sheer pleasure he felt at seeing her momentarily drove out his anxieties. Round them the clacking torrent from the train poured through the barrier. From the station loud-speaker a refined voice hollowly enunciated.

“Hello,” said Barbara.

She seemed more aloof than he remembered her.

“Hello,” said Miles. “I—er--hardly liked to drag you over here to the station.”

“Oh, that's all right,” said Barbara. He well remembered, now, the grey eyes with their long black lashes. “Besides, I have to be at the office later this evening.”

“At the office? On Sunday night?” “I'm in Fleet Street,” said Barbara. “I'm a journalist. That's why I said I didn't 'exactly' write fiction.” She brushed this away. The grey eyes studied him furtively. “What's wrong?” she asked suddenly. “What is it? You look . . .”

“There's the devil and all to pay,” Miles burst out. He felt somehow that he could let himself go in front of this girl. “I was supposed to find Fay Seton at any cost. Everything depended on it. We all thought she'd be in this train. Now I don't know what in blazes to do, because she wasn't in the train after all.”

“Wasn't in the train?” Barbara repeated. Her eyes opened wide. “But Fay Seton was in the train! She walked through that barrier not twenty seconds before you did!”

“Will pass-en-gers for Hon-i-ton,” sang the dictatorial loudspeaker, “join the queue outside Platform Num-ber Nine! Will pass-en-gers for Hon-i-ton . . .”

It blattered above every other noise in the station. And yet the realm of nightmare had returned.

“You must have been seeing things!” said Miles. “I tell you she wasn't aboard that train!” He looked round wildly as a new thought occurred to him. “Stop a bit! So you do know her after all?”

“No! I'd never set eyes on her before in my life!”

“Then how do you know it was Fay Seton?”

“From the photograph. The coloured photograph Professor Rigaud showed us on Friday night. After all, I . . . I though she was with you. And so I wasn't going to keep the appointment. Or at least—I didn't quite know. What's wrong?”

This was disaster fine and full.

He wasn't mad, Miles told himself; and he wasn't drunk, and he wasn't blind; and he could take his oath Fay Seton had not been aboard that train. Fantastic images occurred to him, of a white face and a red mouth. These images were exotic plants which withered in the atmosphere of Waterloo Station, certainly in the atmosphere of the train he had just left.

Yet he looked down at Barbara's fair hair and grey eyes; he thought of her normalness-that was it! A lovable normalness—in this murky affair; and at the same time he thought of all that had happened since he saw her last.

Marion was lying in a stupor at Greywood, and not from the effects of poison or a knife. Dr. Fell had spoken of an evil spirit. These things were not fancies; they were facts. Miles remembered his impression of that morning: here's a malignant force, and Dr. Fell knows what it is; we'll kill it, or it will kill us; and, in sober God's truth, the game had begun now.

All this went through his head in the split-second of Barbara's remark.

“You saw Fay Seton come through the gates,” he said. “In which direction did she go?”

“I couldn't tell. There are too many people.”

“Wait a minute! We're not beaten yet! Professor Rigaud told me last night . . . yes, he's at Greywood too! . . . that you 'phoned him yesterday, and that you knew Fay's address. She's got a room in town somewhere, and according to Dr. Fell she'll go straight to it. Do you know the address?”

“Yes!” Barbara, in a tailored suit and white blouse, with a mackintosh draped over her shoulders and an umbrella hung across her arm, fumblingly opened her handbag and took out an address-book. “This is t. Fiver Bolsover Place, N.W.1. But . . .!”

“Where's Bolsover Place??”

“Well, Bolsover Street is off Camden High Street in Camden Town. I—I looked it up when I wondered whether I ought to go and see her. It's rather a dingy neighborhood, but imagine she's even more hard up than the rest of us.”

“What's her quickest way to get there?”

“By Underground, easily. You can go straight through from here without a change.”

“Then that's what she's done, you can bet a fiver! She can't be two minutes ahead of us! Probably we can catch her! Come on!”

Give me some luck! He was praying under his breath. Give me just one proper hand to play, one card higher than a deuce or a three! And not long afterwards, when they burst out of a ticket-queue and penetrated down into the airless depths where a maze of lines join, he got his card.

Miles heard the rumble of the approaching train as they emerged on the platform of the Northern Line. They were at one end of the platform, and people straggled for more than a hundred yards along its curve. Vision was blurred in this half-cylinder cavern, once brave with white tiling, now sordid and ill-lighted.

The red train swept out of its tunnel in a gale of wind, and streamed past to a stop. And he saw Fay Seton.

He saw her by the bright flash of windows now unscaled from blast-netting. She was standing at the extreme other end of the platform, the front of the train; and she moved forward as the doors rolled open.

“Fay!” he yelled. “Fay!”

It went completely unheard.

“Edgware train!” the guard was bellowing. “Edgware train!”

“Don't try to run up there!” warned Barbara. “The doors will close and we'll lose her together. Hadn't we better go in here?”

They dived into the rear car of the train, a non-smoker, just before the doors did close. Its only other occupants were a policeman, a somnolent-looking Australian soldier, and the guard at his panel of control-buttons. Miles had got only a faint glimpse of Fay's face; but it had looked fierce, preoccupied, with that same curious smile of last night.

It was maddening to be so close to her, and yet . . .

“If I can get through to the front of the train--!”

“Please!” urged Barbara. She indicated the sign, “Do Not Pass From One Car To Another Whilst The Train Is In Motion”' she indicated the guard, and she indicated the policeman. “It wouldn't do much good, would it,if you got yourself arrested now?”

“No. I suppose not.”

“She'll get out at Camden Town. So will we. Sit down here.”

In their ears was a soft, streaming thunder as the train rocketed through the tunnel. The car swayed and creaked round a curve; lights behind opaque glass jolted on the upholstery of the seats. Miles, all his nerves twitching with doubt, and down beside Barbara on a double-seat facing forward.

“I don't like to ask too many questions,” continued Barbara, “but I've been half mad with curiosity ever since I talked to you on the 'phone. What is all the urgency about overtaking Fay Seton?

The train ground to a stop, and the sliding doors rolled open.

“Charing Cross!” yelled the guard conscientiously. “Edgware train!”

Miles sprang to his feet.

“Really it's all right,” Barbara pleaded. “If Dr. Fell says she's going to that place of hers, she's bound to get out at Camden Town. What can happen in the meantime?”

“I don't know,” admitted Miles. “Look here,” he added, sitting down again and taking her hand in both of his. “I've known you only a very short time; but do you mind my saying I'd rather talk to you now than almost anyone else I can think of?”

“No,” answered Barbara, looking away from him, “I don't mind.”

“I can't say how you've been spending the weekend,” pursued Miles, “but we've been having nothing but a Grand Guignol of vampires and near-murders, and . . .”

“What did you say?” She drew back her hand quickly.

“yes! And Dr. Fell claims you may be able to supply one of the most important pieces of information, whatever that is.” He paused. “Who is Jim Morell?”

Clank-thud went the rush of the train, hollow-streaming thorough its tunnel; a breeze touched their hair from the ventilator-windows.

“You can't connect him with this,” said Barbara, and her fingers tightened round her handbag. “He doesn't know, he never did know, anything about the death of Mr. Brooke! He . . .”

“Yes! But do you mind telling me who he is?”

“He's my brother.” Barbara moistened her very smooth, pink lips; not as attractive, not as heady, as those of the passive blue-eyed woman now in the first car of the train. Miles shook this thought out of his mind as Barbara asked quickly: “Where did you hear about him?”

“From Fay Seton.”

“Oh?” She stared a little.

“I'll tell you the whole story in just a minute. But there are certain things to straighten out first. Your brother . . . where is he now?”

“He's in Canada. For three years he was a prisoner of war in Germany, and we thought he was dead. He's been sent out to Canada for his health. Jim's older than I am; he was quite a well-known painter, before the war.”

“And I understand he was a friend of Harry Brooke.”

“Yes.” Then Barbara spoke, softly but very clearly. “He was a friend of that utterly unspeakable swine Harry Brooke.”

“Strand!” shouted out the guard. “Edgware train!”

Subconsciously Miles was listening hard for that voice; listening for every slowing-down of the rumbling wheels, every sigh and jolt as the doors rolled open. The one thing he mustn't miss, on his soul's life, were those words, “Camden Town.”“There's just on thing,” continued Miles, with discomfort stirring through him but with a fierce determination to face it. “I'd better mention before I tell you what happened. And that's this:

“I believe in Fay Seton. I've got into trouble with practically everyone for saying that: with my sister Marion, with Steve Curtis, with Professor Rigaud, even perhaps with Dr. Fell, though I'm not quite so sure where he stands. And, since you were the first person who warned me against her . . .”

“I warned you against her?”

“Yes. Didn't you?”

“Oh!” breathed Barbara Morell.

She had drawn back a little from him, with the dark cylinder-curved walls flying past outside the windows. She breathed that monosyllable in a tone of utter stupefaction, as though she could not believe her ears.

Miles had an instinct that the whole situation was going to change again: that something was not only wrong, but deadly wrong. Barbara stared at him, her mouth open. He saw comprehension come into the grey eyes, slow incredulous comprehension as they searched his face; then half-laughter, a wild helpless gesture . . .

“You thought,” she insisted, “that I--?”

“Yes! Didn't you?”

“Listen,” Barbara put her hand on his arm, and spoke with clear-eyed sincerity. “I wasn't trying to warn you against her. I wasn't wondering if you could help her. Fay Seton is . . .”

“Go on!”

“Fay Seton is one of the most completely wronged, bedevilled, and—and hurt persons I've ever heard of. All I was trying to find out was whether she might have committed the murder, because I didn't know any details about the murder. She'd have been justified, you know, if she had killed someone! But you could tell, from what Professor Rigaud said, she hadn't done that, either. And I was at my wits' end.”

Barbara made a short, slight gesture.

“If you remember, at Beltring's, I wasn't even so much as interested in anything except the murder. The things that went before it, the charges of immorality and—and the other ridiculous thing that almost got her stoned by the country people, didn't matter. Because they were a deliberate, cruel frame-up against her from start to finish.”

Barbara's voice rose.

“I knew that. I can prove it. I've got a whole packet of letters to prove it. That woman's been in hell from lying gossip that prejudiced her in the eyes of the police, and may have ruined her life. I could have helped her. I can help her. But I'm too much of a coward! I'm too much of a coward! I'm too much of a coward!”

Chapter XV

“Leicester Square!” sang the guard.

One or two persons got in. But the long, hot Underground car was still almost empty. The Australian soldier snored. A button tinkled, in communication with the driver far away at the front; the doors rolled shut. It was still a good distance to Camden Town.

Miles didn't notice. He was again in the upstairs room at Beltring's Restaurant, watching Barbara Morell as she faced Professor Rigaud across the dinner-table: watching the expression of her eyes, hearing that curious exclamation under her breath—incredulity or contempt—dismissing as of no importance the statement that Howard Brooke had cursed Fay Seton aloud in the Credit Lyonnais Bank.

Miles was fitting every word, every gesture, into a pattern that hitherto had baffled him.

“Professor Rigaud,” continued Barbara, “is very observant at seeing and describing the outside of things. But he never once realizes, he really doesn't, what's inside. I could have wept when he said jokingly that he was a blind bar and owl. Because in a sense that's perfectly true.

“For a whole summer Professor Rigaud stood at Harry Brooke's shoulder. He preached at Harry; he moulded him, he influenced him. Yet he never guessed the truth. Harry, for all his athletic skill and his good looks—and,” said Barbara with contempt, “they must have been rather pretty-boy good looks—was simply a cold-hearted fish determined to get his own way.”

(Cold-hearted. Cold-hearted. Where had Miles heard that same term before?)

Barbara bit her lip.

“You remember,” she said, “that Harry's heart was set on becoming a painter?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“And he would argue with his parents about it? And then, as Professor Rigaud described it, he would hit a tennis-ball like a streak or go out on the lawn and sit with a 'white-faced brooding swearing look?'”

“I remember that, too.”

“Harry knew it was the one thing on earth his parents would never consent to. They really did idolize him, but just because they idolized him they'd never consent. And he wasn't—wasn't man enough to leave a lot of money and strike out for himself. I'm sorry to talk like this,” Barbara added helplessly, “but it's true. So Harry, long before Fay Seton came there, set about scheming in his horrible little mind for a way to compel them to consent.

“Then Fay arrived there to be his father's secretary, and he did see a way at last.

“I—I've never met the woman,” Barbara confessed broodingly. “I can only judge her through letters. I may be all wrong. But see her as passive and good-natured; really inexperienced; a bit of a romantic, and without much sense of humour.

“And Harry Brooke thought of a way. First he would pretend to fall in love with Fay . . .”

“Pretend to fall in love with her?”

“Yes.”

Dimly Miles began to see the design take form. And yet it was inevitable. As inevitable as . . .

“Tottenham Court Road!”

“Stop a bit,” Miles muttered. “The old proverb says that there are two things which will be believed about any man, and one of them is that he has taken to drink. We might add that there are two things which will be believed about any woman, and both of them are . . .”

“Both of them,” admitted Barbara, “are that she has a horribly bad character”--the colour went up in her face--”and probably carries on with every man in the district. The more quiet and unobtrusive she is, especially if she won't look you straight in the eye or enthuse over a lot of silly games like golf or tennis, then the more people are convinced there must be something in it.

“Harry's scheme was as cold-blooded as that. He would write his father a lot of vilely phrased anonymous letters about her . . .”

“Anonymous letters!” said Miles.

“He would start a whispering campaign against her, connecting her name with Jean This and Jacques That. His parents—they weren't too keen already about his marrying anyone—would get alarmed at the scandal and beg him to break it off.

“He'd already prepared the way by inventing a story, absolutely false, that she'd refused him the first time he proposed marriage with the hint that there was some terrible secret reason why she couldn't marry him. He told that tale to Professor Rigaud and poor old Professor Rigaud retailed it to us. Do you recall that?”

Miles nodded.

“I also recall,” he said, “that when I mentioned the same story to her last night, she . . .”

“She—what?”

“Never mind! Go on!”

“So the scandal would gather, and Harry's parents would beg him to break off the marriage. Harry would only look noble and refuse. The more he refused, the more frantic they would be. Finally he would be crushed, practically in tears, and he would say: 'All right, I'll give her up. But if I do consent to give her up, will you send me to Paris for two years to study painting so that I can forget her?'

“Would they have agreed then? Don't we all know what families are? Of course they would have! They'd have seized at it in blessed relief.

“Only,” added Barbara, “Harry's little plan didn't work out quite like that, you see.

“The anonymous letters horribly worried his father, who wouldn't even so much as mention them to his mother. But Harry's whispering campaign in the district almost failed completely. You know that French shrug of the shoulder and the 'Et alors?' which just about correspond to, 'So what?' They were busy people; they had crops to harvest; such things harmed no one if they didn't interfere with work; so what?”

Barbara began to laugh hysterically, but she checked herself.

“It was Professor Rigaud, always preaching to Harry about crime and the occult—he told us so himself—who in all innocence put Harry on to the thing these people really did fear. The thing that would make them talk and even scream. It's silly and it's horrible and of course it worked straight away. Harry deliberately bribed that sixteen-year-old boy to counterfeit marks in his own throat and start a story about a vampire . . .

“You do se now, don't you?”

“Goodge Street!”

“Harry knew, of course, that his father wouldn't have any nonsense about vampires. Harry didn't want his father to believe that. What Mr. Brooke would hear, what he couldn't help hearing in every corner round Chartres, was a story about his son's fiancee visiting Pierre Fresnac so often at night, and . . . and all the rest of it. That would be enough. That would be more than enough.”

Miles Hammond shivered.

Clank-thud went the train, roaring on in its fusty tunnel. Lights jolted on metal and upholstery. In Barbara's story Miles could se tragedy coming as clearly as though he did not already know of its existence.

“I don't question what you tell me,” he said, and he took a key-ring out of his pocket and twisted if fiercely as though he wanted to tear it in two. “But how do you know these details?”

“Harry wrote them all to my brother!” cried Barbara.

She was silent for a moment.

“Jim's a painter, you see. Harry admired him tremendously. Harry thought—honestly thought!--that Jim as a man of the world would approve of his scheme to get away from a stuffy family atmosphere and call him no end of a clever fellow for thinking this up.”

“Did you know all about it at the time?”

Barbara opened her eyes wide.

“Good heavens, no! That was six years ago. Was only twenty at the time. I remember Jim did keep getting letters from France that worried him, but he never made any remark about it. Then . . .”

“Go on!”

She swallowed hard.

“About the middle of August in that year, I remember Jim with his beard suddenly getting up from the breakfast table with a letter in his hand and saying, 'My God, the old man's been murdered.' He referred once or twice to the Brooke case, and tried o find out all he could from anything that was published in the English newspapers. But afterwards you couldn't get him to say a word about it.

“Then the war. Jim was reported dead in 'forty-two; we believed he was dead. I—I went through his papers. I came across this awful story spread out from letter to letter. Of course there wasn't anything I could do. There wasn't much I could even learn, except a few scanty things in the back files of the papers: that Mr. Brooke had been stabbed and the police rather thought Miss Fay Seton had killed him.

“It was only in this last week . . . Things never do come singly, do they? They always heap up on you all at once!”

“Yes. I can testify to that.”

“Warren Street!”

“A press photograph came into the office, showing three Englishwomen who were returning from France, and one of them was, 'Miss Fay Seton, whose peacetime profession is that of librarian.' And a man at the office happened to tell me all about the famous Murder Club, and said that the speaker on Friday night was to be Professor Rigaud, giving an eye-witness account of the Brooke case.”

There were tears in Barbara's eyes now.

“Professor Rigaud loathes journalists. He wouldn't ever before speak at the Murder Club, even, because he was afraid they'd bring in the press. I couldn't go to him in private unless I produced my bundle of letters to explain why I was interested; and I couldn't—do you understand that?--I couldn't have Jim's name mixed up in this if something dreadful cam out of it. So I . . .”

“You tried to get Rigaud to yourself at Beltring's?”

“Yes.”

She nodded quickly, and then stared out of the window.

“When you mentioned that you were looking for a librarian, it did occur to me, 'Oh, Lord! Suppose . . .?' You know what I mean?”

“Yes.” Miles nodded. “I follow you.”

“You were so fascinated by that colour photograph, so much under its spell, that I thought to myself, “Suppose I confide in him? If he wants to find a librarian, suppose I ask him to find Fay Seton and tell her there's someone who knows she's been the victim of a filthy frame-up? It's possible he'll meet her in any case; but suppose I ask him to find her?”

“And why didn't you confide in me?”

Barbara's fingers twisted round her handbag.

“Oh, I don't know.” She shook her head rapidly. “As I said to you at the time, it was only a silly idea of mine. And maybe I resented it, a little, that you were so obviously smitten.”

“But, look here!--”

Barbara flung this away and rushed on.

“But the main thing was: what could you or I actually do for her? Apparently they didn't believe she was guilty of murder, and that was the main thing. She'd been the victim of enough foul lying stories to poison anyone's life, but you can't un-ruin a reputation. Even if I weren't such a coward, how could I help? I told you, the last thing I said before I jumped out of that taxi, I don't see how I can be of any use now!”

“The letters don't contain any information about the murder of Mr. Brooke, then?”

“No! Look here!”

Winking to keep back tears, her face flushed and her ash-blonde head bent forward, Barbara fumbled inside the handbag. She held out four folded sheets of notepaper closely written.

“This,” she said, “is the last letter Harry Brooke ever wrote to Jim. He was writing it on the afternoon of the murder. First it goes on—gloating!--over the success of his scheme to blacken Fay and get what he wanted. Then it breaks off suddenly. Look at the end bit!”

“Euston!”

Miles dropped the key[-ring in his pocket and took the letter. The end, done in a violent agitated scrawl for an after-thought, was headed, “6:45 p.m.” Its words danced in front of Mile's eyes as the train quivered and roared.

Jim, something terrible had just happened. Somebody's killed Dad. Rigaud and I left him on the tower, and somebody went up and stabbed him. Must get this in the post quickly to ask you for God's sake, old man, don't ever tell anybody what I've been writing to you. If Fay went scatty and killed the old boy because he tried to buy her off, I won't want anybody to know I've been putting out reports about her. It wouldn't look right and besides I didn't want anything like this to happen. Please, old man. Yours in haste, H. B.

So much raw, unpleasant human nature cried out of that letter, Miles thought, that it was as though he could se the man writing it.

Miles stared straight ahead, lost now to everything.

Rage against Harry Brooke clouded his mind; it maddened him and weakened him. To think he never suspected anything in the character of Harry Brooke . . . and yet, obscurely, hadn't he? Professor Rigaud had been wrong in estimating this pleasant young man's motives. Yet Rigaud had drawn, sharply drawn, a picture of nerves and instability. Miles himself had once used the word neurotic to describe him.

Harry Brooke had coolly and deliberately, to get his own way, invented the whole damned . . .

But, if Miles had ever doubted whether he himself was in love with Fay Seton, he doubted no longer.

The thought of Fay, completely innocent, sick with bewilderment and fright, was one that neither the heart nor the imagination could resist. He cursed himself for ever having doubts of any kind about her. He had been seeing everything through distorted spectacles; he had been wondering, almost with a sense of repulsion mixed with the attraction he felt for her, what power of evil might lie behind the blue eyes. And yet all the time . . .

“She isn't guilty,” Miles said. “She isn't guilty of anything.”

“That's right.”

“I'll tell you what Fay feels about herself. And don't think I'm making exaggerated or melodramatic statements when I say so. She feels that she's damned.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don't think it. Know it.” Intense conviction seized him. “That's what was in her whole behaviour last night. Rightly or wrongly, she feels that she can't get away from something, and that she's damned. I don't pretend to explain what's been going on, but I know that much.

“What's more, she's in danger. Something would happen, Dr. Fell said, if she tried to carry out her plans. That's why he said I must catch her at any cost and not lose touch with her for a moment. He said it was a matter of life and death. And, so help me, that's what I'm going to do! We owe her that much, after all she's been through. The very split-second we get out of this train . . .”

Miles stopped.

Some inner ear, some faint consciousness still alert, had just rung a warning. It warned him that, for the first time since he entered this Underground train, the train had come to a stop before he remembered hearing it stop.

Then, with the bright image of the car leaping out at him, he heard a sound which galvanized him. It was the soft, rolling rumble of the doors as they started to close.

“Miles!” cried Barbara—and woke up at exactly the same moment.

The doors closed with a soft bump. The guard's bell-push tinkled. Miles, springing up to stare out of the window as the train glided on again, saw the words of the station-sign glaring out at him with white letters on a blue ground, and the words were “Camden Town.”

He was afterwards told that he shouted something to the guard, but he did not realize this at the time. He only remembered plunging frantically at the doors, wrenching to get his fingers into the joining and tear them open. Someone said, “Take it easy, mate!” The Australian soldier woke up. The policeman, interested, go to his feet.

It was no good.

As the train whipped past the platform, gathering speed, Miles stood with his face against the glass of the doors.

Half a dozen persons straggle towards the way-out. Dingy overhead lights swung with the wind which billowed through this stale-smelling cavern. He clearly saw Fay—in an open tweed coat and black beret, with the same blank, miserable, tortured look on her face—walking towards the way-out as the train bore him past into the tunnel.

Chapter XVI

Under a very dark sky, drizzling, the rain splashed into Bolsover place, Camden Town.

Of the broad stretch of Camden High Street at no great distance from the Underground station, even off the narrow dinginess of Bolsover Street, this was a dul-de-sac seen under a brick arch.

Its surface was of uneven paving-stones now black with rain. Straight ahead ere two blitzed houses, looking like ordinary houses until you noticed the state of the windows. On the right was a smallish factory or warehouse bearing the legend, “J. Mings & Co., Ltd., Artificial Dentures.” On the left lay first a small one-story front, boarded up, whose sign said that it had once served suppers. Next to this were two houses, brick-built of that indeterminate colour between grey and brown, with some glass in their windows and an air not entirely of decay.

Nothing stirred there, not even a stray cat. Miles, heedless of the fact that the rain was soaking him through, gripped Barbara's arm.

“It's all right,” Barbara muttered, moving her shoulders under the mackintosh, and holding her umbrella crookedly. “We haven't lost ten minutes.”

“No. But we have lost that time.”

Miles knew that she was frightened now. On the way back, where at least they had been able to step instantly into a train going in the other direction at Chalk Farm, he had been pouring out the story of last night's events. It was plain that Barbara no more knew what to make of it than he did; but she was afraid.

“Number Five,” said Miles. “Number Five.”

It was the last house down on the left, at right angles with the two blitzed houses. Miles noticed something else as he led Barbara over the uneven paving-stone. In a large grimy display-window on the premises of J. Mings & Co. Ltd., was a very large set of artificial teeth.

As an advertising display they might have been considered gruesome or comic, but had they been in a better state of repair they could not have failed to attract attention. Made of metal painted in naturalistic colours as to teeth and gums, they loomed there close-shut and disembodied, a giant's teeth in the faint grey light. Miles didn't like them. He felt their presence behind him as he went to the blistered door of Number Five, on which there was a knocker.

But his hand never reached the knocker.

Instantly a woman's head appeared at the open ground-floor window of the house next door, moving aside what once might have been a lace curtain. She was a middle-aged woman who looked at the newcomers avidly; not at all in suspicion, but with pervading curiosity.

“Miss Fay Seton?” said Miles

The woman turned around towards he room behind her, evidently to kick at something, before she replied. Then she nodded towards Number Five.

“First floor-up-left-front.”

“I—er--just walk in?”

“'Ow else?”

“I see. Thank you.”

The woman gravely inclined her head in acknowledgment of this, and just as gravely withdrew. Miles turned the knob of the door and opened it. He motioned Barbara ahead of him into a passage with a staircase. The stale mildewy air of the passage went over them in a wave. When Miles closed the door it was so dark that they could barely make out the outline of the stairs. Distantly he could hear rain pattering on a skylight.

“I don't like it.” Barbara spoke under her breath. “Why ever does she want to live in a place like this?”

“You know what it is in London nowadays. You can't get anything anywhere for love or money.”

“But why did she keep the room after she'd gone to Greywood?”

Miles wondered that himself. He didn't like the place either. He wanted to shout Fay's name, to be assured sh was here after all.

“First-floor-up-left-front,” said Miles. “Mind the stairs.”

It was a steep staircase, which turned round a steep bend into a narrow passage leading towards the front of the house. At the end of this passage was a window, one of its panes mended with cardboard, which looked down into Bolsover Place. It admitted enough light to show them a closed door on each side of the passage. A few seconds later, when Miles had started for the left-hand door, it admitted still more light as well.

A fairly bright glow sprang up outside that front window, half kindling the little passage with its black linoleum. Miles, his heart in his mouth, had just raised a hand to knock at the left-hand door when the light startled him like an interruption. It startled Barbara too; he heard her heel scrape on the linoleum. Both of them glanced out of the window.

The teeth were moving.

Across the way, in the premises of Messrs. J. Mings & Co., a bored caretaker was amusing a Sunday afternoon by switching on a light in the grimy window and setting in motion the electric mechanism which controlled the set of teeth.

Very slowly they opened, very slowly they closed: endlessly opening and closing o catch you eye. Grimy and evil-looking in disuse, sometimes sticking a little, the pink gums and partly darkened teeth gaped wide and shut again. They had an effect at once theatrical and horribly real. They were soundless and inhuman. Through the window, blurred with rain, they reared a shadow of themselves—slowly, very slowly opening and closing—on the wall of the passage.

Barbara said softly:

“Of all the . . .!”

“Sh-h!”

Miles could not have said why he called for silence; to himself he seemed occupied with the reflection that the display opposite was damned poor advertising and not very funny. He lifted his hand again, and knocked at the door.

“Yes?” called a calm voice, after a very slight pause.

It was Fay's voice. She was all right.

Miles stood motionless for a second or two, watching out of the corner of his eye that blurred shadow moving on the wall, before he turned the knob. The door was not locked. He opened t.

Fay Seton, still in the tweed coat over her dove-grey dress, stood in front of a chest-of-drawers looking round inquiringly. Her expression was placid, not even very interested, until she saw who the newcomer was. Then she gave a smothered cry.

He could see every detail of the room clearly, since the curtains were drawn and the light was burning. A dim bulb hanging over the chest-of-drawers showed him the rather broken-down bedroom furniture, the discoloured wall-paper, the frayed carpet. A heavy tin box, painted black and half as big as a trunk, had been hastily drawn out from under the bed; its lid was not quite shut, and a small padlock hung open from the hasp.

Fay's voice went shrilling up.

“What are you doing here?”

“I followed you! I was told to follow you! You're in danger! There's--”

Miles took two steps into the room.

“I'm afraid you startled me,” said Fay, controlling herself. One hand went under her heart, a gesture he had seen her make before. She gave a little laugh. “ didn't expect--! After all--!” Then, quickly: “Who's that with you?”

“This is Miss Morell. The sister of—well, of Jim Morell. She wants very much to meet you. She . . .”

Then Miles saw what was on top of the chest-of-drawers, and everything in existence seemed to stop.

First he saw an old brief-case of black leather, dried and dusty and cracked, bulging from something inside it; its straps were loosened, and the flap was partly opened. But an old brief-case may belong to anyone. Beside it lay a large, flat packet of banknotes, the topmost one showing the denomination of twenty pounds. The colour of the banknotes might once have been white; they had now a dry, blurred, smeary appearance, and were stained in dry patches of rust-brown.

Fay's pale face was paler yet as she saw the direction of his glance. It seemed very difficult for her to draw breath.

“Yes,” she told him. “Those are bloodstains. Mr. Brooke's blood, you see, got on them when they . . .”

“For the love o God, Fay!”

“I'm not needed here,” Barbara's voice spoke frantically, but not loudly. “I didn't really want to come. But Miles . . .”

“Please do come in,” Fay said in her gentle voice, while the blue eyes kept roving and roving as though she scarcely saw him. “And close the door.”

Yet she was not calm. This apparent case was the effect of sheer despair, or of some emotion akin to it. Miles' head was spinning. He carefully closed the door, to get even a few seconds in which to think. Gently he put his hand on Barbara's shoulder, for Barbara was on the point of running out of the room. He looked round the bedroom, feeling its close air stifle him.

Then he found his voice.

“But you can't be guilty after all!” he said with desperate reasonableness. It seemed vitally important to convince Fay, logically, that she couldn't be guilty. “I tell you, it's impossible! It's . . .Listen!”

“Yes?” said Fay.

Beside the chest-of-drawers there was an old armchair with patches of its back and arms frayed to threads. Fay sank down into it, her shoulders drooping. Though her expression hardly changed, the tears welled out of her eyes and ran unheeded down her cheeks. He had never sen her cry before, and this was worse than anything else.

“We know now,” said Miles, feeling numb, “that you weren't guilty of anything at all. I've heard . . . I've just heard, I tell you! . . . that all those accusations against you were a fake deliberately trumped up by Harry Brooke--”

Fay raised her head quickly.

“So you know that,” she said.

“What's more”--he suddenly realized something else, and stood back and pointed his fingers at her--”you knew it too! You knew they were trumped up by Harry Brooke! You've known it all along!”

It was more than the flash of illumination which sometimes comes from strung-up emotion: it was a fitting-together of facts.

“That's why, last night, you started to laugh in that crazy way when I asked you whether you and Harry Brooke had got married after all. That's why you brought up the subject of anonymous letters against you, though Rigaud had never mentioned any. That's why you talked about Jim Morell, the great friend Harry wrote to every week; though Rigaud never heard of him either.—You've known all along! Haven't you?”

“Yes. I've known all along.”

It was little more than a whisper. The tears still welled out of her eyes, and her lips had begun to shake as well.

“Are you insane, Fay? Have you gone completely off your head? Why didn't you ever speak out and say so?”

“Because . . . oh, God, what difference does it make now?”

“What difference does it make?” Miles swallowed hard, “With this damned thing--!” He strode over to the chest-of-drawers and picked up the packet of bank-notes, feeling repulsion in the touch of them. “There are three more packets in the brief-case, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Fay. “Three more. I only stole them. I didn't spend them.”

“Come to think of it, what else is in that brief-case? What makes it bulge like that?”

“Don't touch that brief-case! Please!”

“All right. I've got no right to badger you like this. I know that. I'm only doing it because—because it's necessary. But you ask what difference it makes? When for nearly six years the police have been trying to find out what happened to this case and the money inside it?”

The footsteps outside in the passage, which they had been too preoccupied to hear until now, approached the door with a casual air. But the tap on the door, though not loud, had a peremptory sound which could not be disregarded.

It was Miles who spoke; neither of the two women were capable of it.

“Who's there?”

“I'm a police officer,” said the voice outside, with that same combination of the casual and the peremptory. “Mind if I come in?”

Miles' hand, still holding the banknotes, moved as fast as a striking snake when he thrust those notes into his pocket. It was, he thought to himself, just as well. For the person outside did not wait for an invitation.

Framed in the doorway, as he swung the door wide open, stood a tall square-shouldered man in a raincoat and a bowler hat. All of them, perhaps, had been expecting a uniform to Miles at least this was rather more ominous. There was something vaguely familiar about the new-comer's face: the close-cropped moustache turning grey, the square jaw with muscles conspicuous at the corners, the suggestion of the military.

He stood looking from one to the other of the persons in front of him, his hand on the knob; and, in the passage behind him, the light reared and lowered a shadow of he opening and closing of teeth.

Twice those teeth opened and closed before the newcomer cleared his throat.

“Miss Fay Seton?”

Fay rose to her feet, turning out her wrist by way of reply. Superbly graceful, unconscious of the tear-stains on her face; drained of violence, past caring.

“My name is Hadley,” the stranger announced. “Superintendent Hadley. Metropolitan C.I.D.”

And now Miles realized why this face was vaguely familiar. Miles had moved over to the side of Barbara Morell. It was Barbara who spoke.

“I interviewed you once,” said Barbara shakily, “for the Morning Record. You talked a good deal, but you wouldn't give m permission to print much of it.”

“Right,” agreed Hadley, and looked at her. “You're Miss Morell, of course.” He looked thoughtfully at Miles. “And you must be Mr. Hammond. You seem to have got yourself pretty thoroughly soaking wet.”

“It wasn't raining when I left home.”

“Always wise,” said Hadley, shaking his head, “to take a raincoat when you go out in these days. I could lend you mine, only I'm afraid I'm going to need it myself.”

The studiedly social air of all this, with its element of deadly danger and tension underneath, couldn't go on for long. Miles broke it.

“Look here, Superintendent!” He burst out. “You didn't come here to talk about the weather. The main thing is—you're a friend of Dr. Fell.”

“That's right,” agreed Hadley. He came in, removed his hat, and closed the door.

“But Dr. Fell said the police weren't going to be brought into this!”

“Into what?” Hadley asked politely, with a slight smile.

“Into anything!”

“Well, that depends on what you mean,” said Hadley.

His eyes wandered round the room: at Fay's handbag and black beret on the bed, at the big dusty tin box drawn out from under the bed, at the drawn curtains on the two little windows. His gaze rested, without apparent curiosity, on the brief-case lying there conspicuously under the light over the chest-of-drawers.

Miles, his right hand tightly clutching the sheaf of banknotes in his pocket, watched him as you might watch a tame tiger.

“The fact is,” Hadley pursued easily, “I've had a very long 'phone conversation with the maestro . . .”

“With Dr. Fell?

“Yes. And a good deal of it wasn't quite clear. But it seems, Mr. Hammond, your sister had a very bad and dangerous scare last night.”

Fay Seton moved round the big tin box and picked up her handbag from the bed. She went to the chest-of-drawers, tilted the mirror above it so as better to catch the light, and set about with handkerchief and powder to remove the traces of tears. Her eyes in the mirror were blank, like blue marbles; but her elbow quivered frantically.

Miles clutched the banknotes.

“Dr. Fell told you what happened at Greywood?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“So the police have to be called in?”

“Oh, no. Not unless we're asked. And in any case you'd approach toe police of the district; not London. No,” said Hadley in a leisurely way, “what Fell really wanted was to know the name of a certain test.

“Certain test?”

“A scientific test to determine . . . well, what he wanted to determine. And whether I could tell him anyone who knew how to carry it out. He said he couldn't remember the name of the test, or anything much about it except that you used melted paraffin.” Hadley smiled slightly. “He meant the Gonzalez test, of course.”