The Reader Is Warned

PEGUIN BOOKS

THE READER IS WARNED

Carter Dickson

FIRST PUBLISHED 1939

PUBLISHBD IN PENGUIN BOOKS 1951

PART I

TWILIGHT

Concerning a Prophecy Made and Fulfilled

LETTER FROM MR LAWRENCE CHASE TO DR JOHN SANDERS

81, Soane Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields,

26th April, 1938

MY DEAR SANDERS,

What are you doing this week-end, the 30th? Whatever it is, I hope I can persuade you to put it off. We should very much like to have you with us at Fourways; and could you manage to bring Sir Henry Merrivale as well ?

Fourways, as you probably know, is Sam and Mina Constable's place. Sam is a sort of distant relative of mine, and in any case you'll have heard of Mina. They ask me to extend the heartiest invitation to you both. The reason is this: Mina has got hold of a mind-reader.

On my solemn word of honour, this is not a hoax or a joke. And let not your scientific soul be shocked. The fellow isn't a music-hall turn. He is a student of some kind. I don't think he is a fake; at least (so far as my somewhat dazed intelligence goes) I don't see how he can be a fake. Unassuming sort of chap, no fuss and feathers about him. But he really does seem to read thoughts in a way that will raise your hair. He's got some sort of theory that Thought is a physical force, which might be used as a weapon.

It will be a very small patty: just Sam and Mina; our friend the thought-reader, whose name is Pennik; Hilary Keen; and myself. Hilary Keen is a new gal, a great friend of mine - so no funny business, see?

Now have I intrigued you, or not? We are making the week-end from Friday, the 29th. Good train from Charing Cross, 5.30 to Camberdene. A car will meet you at the station. If you can manage it, drop me a line.

Yours,

LAWRENCE CHASE

p.s. - Is your fair lady, Marcia Blystone, still on that round-the-world cruise with her parents? I hear all is not well; hope nothing seriously wrong?

LETTER FROM DR JOHN SANDERS TO MR LAWRENCE CHASE

Harris Institute, Bloomsbury St., W.C.I,

27th April, 1938

MY DEAR CHASE,

Very glad to join you on Friday, but I am afraid it will be impossible for H. M. to be with us. He has to go north on some official business. But he is violently curious about your thought-reader, and promises to get back and at least look in by Sunday, if that will not be too late?

While reserving my own opinion until I have heard the evidence, I must say that if you have quoted him correctly your thought-reader appears to be talking scientific flapdoodle.

Many thanks to Mr and Mrs Constable. Charing Cross, 5.20 Camberdene.

Yours,

JOHN SANDERS

p.s. - I do not understand your reference to funny business. Nor to ‘all not being well'. Yes, Marcia is still on the cruise. Her last letter was from Honolulu; they have gone on from there to Jamaica; back home in June.

CHAPTER I

On the afternoon of Friday, April 29th, Dr John Sanders travelled down to Surrey by the recommended train.

He had no notion that he was on the eve of the criminal case which would turn the hair of the legal profession as grey as its wigs, and upset precedents of both law and medicine. But Sanders was not easy in his mind. Not even the brilliant spring afternoon, with a soft-wind and a clear-glowing sky, could allure him. The recommended train was crowded, so that he could not pull a certain letter out of his pocket and study it again as he might study a specimen through a microscope.

Of course, he had nothing to worry about. Marcia Blystone, though she might be six thousand miles away in Honolulu, was his fiancée. This world-cruise had been necessary because of a small scandal about her father arising out of the Haye murder case. She had not really been too keen to go, though Sanders could not blame her for her delight at the prospect. And she wrote frequently. Her letters were informative and sprightly j sometimes, he thought, a little too sprightly. He would have preferred something more on the sentimental side, or even impassioned side. Once - when she was in a sentimental mood, in Greece - he did get such a letter, and he walked about for days with his head in the air.

But it did not happen often. And what was actually beginning to gnaw at his imagination was the now persistent recurrence, in those letters, of the name of Kessler.

First the reference was casual. 'The passengers as a whole are a foul lot, but we have met one man who seems quite decent; Kessler, I think his name is.' Then presently: 'Mr Kessler has made this cruise four times, and is able to help us a lot.' And: 'You should have heard Gerald Kessler's description of his experiences with a camel in the Gobi.' Damn the Gobi and the swank that went therewith. It was always 'us,' but it became: 'Gerald Kessler was telling us,’ and finally, 'Jerry says.'

Sanders could trace the course of that acquaintanceship through every sea, as clearly as a ship's officer pins flags on a map to show the mileage from port to port. Kessler had begun to haunt him. Kessler's features remained vague, in spite of a snapshot of him with Marcia at Yokohama: showing him tall and lounging in white flannels, with a pipe in his mouth. He could not help endowing Kessler with vast accomplishments. Back to chilly England, in the days between December and March, came these tales of warm waters and coloured lanterns, where things seemed more spacious for being under the almond-blossom. Sanders - examining the innards of a corpse for the Home Office pathologist - was at times badly depressed. Faceless Kessler. Now they were at Honolulu. Sanders's notions of Honolulu were vague, being chiefly concerned with guitars and people throwing wreaths round other people's necks. But he could imagine that its effect on a girl like Marcia Blystone might be sinister.

Kessler, Kessler, Kessler! Or what about that other fellow, the one she barely mentioned? Mightn't Kessler be a screen?

Then again there were times when he wondered whether he might not be losing interest in Marcia. The sight of a letter beside his plate did not always produce the usual symptoms. There were times, as he read Marcia's sprightly and sophisticated descriptions, when he was almost tempted to say sadly, 'Light of my life, come off it.' His conscience pointed a stern finger at him for this; but there it was.

Such, then, was his state of mind when he went down to Fourways, Sam Constable's country house, for the weekend. It may have been partly responsible for what happened afterwards - he could never be quite sure.

It was a quarter past six when the train left him at a wayside station called Camberdene in the vast stillness of evening. He liked that stillness; he liked the feeling of being alone; for the first time he felt relaxed. The sky had that darkening clearness, with something of the quality of polished glass in it, by which everything seems large and fresh and new-washed. And the countryside smelled of evening as distinctively as it smelled of spring. No car had been sent to meet him, but he did not mind. A station-master, whose voice rose with hollow loudness along the platform, informed him that he could get no other conveyance there; and that Fourways was half a mile up the road. He set out to walk it cheerfully, carrying a heavy suitcase.

Fourways, when he found it, could not be called a gem of architecture. The one thing you could say about it was that it managed to look at once massive and yet squeezed together. It was Victorian Gothic: or, more properly, it started out in a smooth upward run of smooth dark-red brick, rose plainly to a narrow and massive height like the side of a ship, and then sprouted out into small pinnacle-towers, turrets, and gewgaw chimneys. Standing well back in the triangle formed by two sides of a cross-roads, its six or seven acres of ground were surrounded by a tall brick wall which itself must have cost somebody a fortune in the 'eighties.

Whoever built Fourways had wanted privacy, and had got it. Outside the walls at the cross-roads there was an A. A. box and an A.A. man directing traffic. But inside a turn of the path cut you off with trees, until you saw stained-glass windows and tiny balconies ahead.

Dr Sanders - vastly interested - tramped up the sanded drive to the noise of his own footsteps. There was a flutter in a bird-bath before the door, and a heavy twittering of sparrows round the face of Fourways. Sanders knew nothing of Sam or Mina Constable except that they were great friends of Lawrence Chase; he had no idea why they should want to meet him. Chase, that amiable but sometimes confused young barrister, usually went on the assumption that you knew everything. But it must be confessed that Sanders rather liked their house.

He raised a large iron, knocker on the door, and hammered it. The bird-bickering increased, but there was no reply.

After a pause he knocked again, without response. He could hear no footstep or stir of life inside. Coming on top of the absence of a car at the station, it disquieted him with several possibilities: the wrong date, a misunderstanding, a letter gone astray. He hesitated, put down his suitcase, and took a turn that carried him as far as the right-hand side of the house.

A wing, consisting of one large room, was built out from the middle of this side. It was a conservatory as the late nineteenth century knew conservatories; a spacious lounge built of wood, with tall stained-glass windows stretching to the ground, and rounded roof of glass. In this age it looked rich and archaic, stuffed and stuffy. One of the stained-glass windows was pushed half-way up; and, to his relief, Sanders heard a voice. It was a woman's voice, speaking above a faint musical noise like running water.

'He's got to go away,' the voice said. 'You've got to persuade Mina to send him away, Larry. Otherwise there'll be trouble: don't you know that?'

It spoke with such a note of urgency that Sanders stopped involuntarily. Someone else chuckled, and he heard Lawrence Chase's voice.

'What's the matter? Are you afraid he'll read your mind ?'

'You know, in a way I am,' the girl admitted.

Sanders coughed, scuffling his feet on the sanded driveway. Then he crossed the strip of lawn separating the conservatory from the driveway, tapped at the window, and ducked his head inside.

'Good Lord I' said Chase, turning round. A girl in a dark-coloured frock got up quickly from her seat by a miniature fountain.

Inside it was even warmer and stuffier than Sanders had expected. Very little light penetrated through the glass dome of the roof, whose edges were.heavily gilded. Large plants of a semi-tropical variety, interspersed with ferns and palms, thickened the dimness. The tiny fountain fell with such thin spray that it made only a kind of murmur in the centre of a dull-tiled floor thick with rugs. Against this background of the outmoded, a modern portable electric fire made a. glow which reflected orange-red in the floor, the spray of the fountain, and the glass roof.

‘It's old Sanders,' observed Chase, as though incredulous. 'Good Lord, look here, I'm sorry about that car. We seem to have started the week-end badly already. By the way, let me present: Dr Sanders, this is Miss Hilary Keen.'

He gave Sanders a significant look, like one who repeats and-no-funny-business, understand? His face, already long, grew longer and more solemn. Lawrence Chase was a long lean young man with an unhurried manner and a genuine talent for the law. The words rolled from his tongue. At the time when this house was built, there was current a phrase which exactly described him: he looked as though he had just stepped out of a band-box. But solemnity was his keynote now.

'Everything is disorganized, I'm afraid,' he explained. "That's why you weren't met. We've had an accident.' 'An accident?'

'Yes. Mina and Hilary and Sam and I came down by train. So did our thought-reading friend Pennik. But the servants - all four of 'em - were driving down in Sam's car with all the luggage. The luggage was sent on to us; but not the servants, I'm afraid.'

'Not the servants ? Why not ?'

'Well, nobody seems to know. Hodges, that's Sam's chauffeur, evidently tried to take a curve on a hill too fast, and smacked into a lorry this side of Guildford. I don't understand it, because Hodges is the most careful driver I ever rode with.'

'You mean they're seriously -?'

'Oh no, nobody is seriously hurt. But bruises and shock at the least of it, that'll keep them there all night anyway. In the meantime, we haven't even got anybody to fry an egg. It's inconvenient. Much more inconvenient for them, of course, poor devils,' he added hastily.

'Much more,' agreed Hilary Keen. 'And I can fry an egg. How do you do, Dr Sanders?'

Sanders had been waiting to acknowledge the introduction. In this semi-gloom it was difficult to see her distinctly. Though she must have been about his own age, in the early thirties, she seemed far younger by reason of a sort of smooth and warm aliveness: an aliveness of body and mind and even voice. It was not that she conveyed the impression of being fragile, but only of being young. She was not a beauty, for she had no personality of beauty. Her blue eyes and dark brown bobbed hair were of such a conventional type that you might not have looked twice at her if it had not been for that aliveness of personality. But, once having looked, you studied her. In addition to this vitality, Sanders had seldom seen a person with more poise, or less restlessness of gesture. She sat by the rim of the fountain, wearing a plain dark frock; and you did not forget her presence.

Also, she had a very pleasant laugh.

'Odd,' Chase was going on in a ruminating tone, 'how lonely it seems in a house without servants. Odd - the six of us, shut up here over the week-end, with nobody to run the ship.'

‘Is it?' inquired Hilary. 'What's odd about it?'

Though she took up the challenge instantly, Sanders could sense the same atmosphere which Chase could perhaps not define himself. In a room opening off the conservatory he could hear a clock strike; it was as though the curtains of Fourways muffled them off from the world. Chase hesitated.

'Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm sharing the general tendency towards the psychic. And then poor old Sam will have a fit if the invaluable Parker isn't here to draw his bath or put in his cuff-links. - Hilary,' he added, with a swift and fluent turn of the subject, 'is in the same line of business as we are, my lad. She works for the Department of Public Prosecutions. She charges 'em with the crime; you cut 'em up; I defend or prosecute 'em. With luck. We're a fine parcel of ghouls, aren't we?'

'I suppose we are, really,' Hilary agreed with all seriousness. She appealed to Sanders. 'But - you're the friend of Sir Henry Merrivale, aren't you?'

'I'm one of them, anyhow.'

'And he is coming down here on Sunday, isn't he?'. 'Oh yes.'

'Hilary expects trouble with our friend the mind-reader,' said Chase. He spoke with a kind of expansive fondness, as though he were indulging a small girl.

'I am being accused of fads and fancies,' said Hilary, examining her finger-nails. 'Now let me ask you something; let me put a hypothetical case. Suppose this man is perfectly genuine. Suppose he has the power he says he has, and with the proper effort can read every thought in our heads like plain print. I don't necessarily admit he's genuine, though I never met a performance that made me feel quite so - so creepy. But, supposing him to be genuine, do you realize just what that would mean ?'

Sanders must have looked dubious, for she caught his look with as imperceptible a turn .as a fencer catches a thrust; there was in fact in her mind something of the quality of the swordsman. She smiled.

'Dr Sanders doesn't believe in mind-readers.'

'I don't know,' Sanders admitted honestly. 'But go on. Granting your hypothesis, what do we get?'

She stared at the fountain.

'I've been talking to Larry about a play called Dangerous Corner. The theme of the play, you may remember, is that in all conversations among friends or relatives there is a dangerous corner, where the most trivial word will turn the talk to disaster. Mostly we miss that comer; but sometimes the wheel skids by accident. Then a secret comes, out - about somebody. But, once you've turned that corner, you've got to keep on down the road. The exposure of that secret will lead to the exposure of another secret about somebody else, until one by one the real inner life of everybody is shown up; and the sight isn't pretty.

'That comer is dangerous enough. But it is a comer; it is taken by accident or chance. On the other hand, suppose you had somebody who took it deliberately, because he knew where it was and what it would lead to ? Suppose you had a person with a power to see into minds? To know every secret people were thinking about? The result doesn't bear thinking about in itself. Life would simply become intolerable, that's all. Now wouldn't it?'

She had been speaking quietly, in an explanatory way and without any emphasis on words. At the end she merely raised her eyes. Lawrence Chase looked surprised and doubtful (of her) and somewhat fretful.

'It's a bit too academic for me -'

'No, it isn't, Larry. You know that.'

'And I also begin to suspect, my girl, that you have a low mind.'

'Perhaps I have. I honestly don't know. But I notice that people always accuse you of having something wrong with your mind whenever you ask them to exercise theirs.'

'Of humanity in general, I mean,' said Chase. Hitherto he had been speaking with light good-humour, casting an eye at Sanders as though bidding him to listen to the girl. Now he drew himself up with such straightness that his .sharp shoulder-blades showed through the back of his coat. 'Right you are, then. We'll be desperately serious. Take the play you're talking about: if I remember correctly, before they finished digging out secrets they found that among them the characters had committed nearly every crime in the Decalogue. Hang it all! You don't seriously suggest that that would apply to any casual group of people, do you?'

'Oh, crime!' said Hilary, and smiled. 'Let me ask you something. Suppose every thought that came into your head in the course of one day were written down, and the whole thing read out to an assembled group of your friends.'

'God forbid!'

'You wouldn't like it?'

'I rather think I should prefer to be boiled in oil,' Chase declared reflectively.

'And yet you haven't committed any crime; any great crime, that is?' 'No. None that worries me, anyhow.' There was a silence.

'Oh, and another thing,' pursued Hilary, with a glow of pure mischief in her blue eyes. 'We can leave out crimes. We can even leave out your feminine conquests, or attempted conquests. You don't have to own up to the times you've seen a girl you rather liked, and invited her away somewhere, and thought, "That's nice; that'll be easy," when really you didn't know anything about her. People talk about "secrets," but usually all they mean is secrets about love-affairs or would-be love-affairs - '

'And usually they're quite right,' said Chase with candour. But even in the gloom you could see the blood come into his face.

'Well? Leaving out crime and all matters of sex, would you still -'

'No, look here!' interrupted Chase. 'This is going too far. We're supposed to be having an academic argument; not a game of Truth. Besides, why have my shortcomings and stupidities got to be pitched on? Would you like your thoughts for the course of a day to be paraded out in front of everybody?'

'I should hope not,' said Hilary fervently.

'Aha! Even apart from crime and sex, you've thought thoughts you wouldn't have known?'

'Yes.'

'In fact you've even thought thoughts about crime and sex?'

'Of course.'

'Well, that's all right, then,' said Chase, mollified. 'So, before the party becomes rowdy, suppose we drop the subject.'

'We can't drop it. That's just the point, don't you understand? You see how easy it is to start a thing like this going, just as we've been doing now. That's not because we're all criminals, but because we're all human. And it's why we've got to persuade Mina to get rid of this man Pennik.'

Chase hesitated, and Hilary turned to Sanders.

'He's going to make trouble,' Hilary said. 'I don't mean that his intentions are evil or that he's a mischief-maker. No. On the contrary, his intentions are good, and in that unassuming way of his he's rather charming -'

Then what are you worried about?' inquired Chase: though he himself looked far from at ease.

'Because that's just the whole difficulty. Unless he's a bigger charlatan than seems possible, he really believes in this gift of his. Under that mild exterior of his he would do anything, anything to convince people it was true. Particularly since Mr Constable -'

'Sam.'

'Sam, then. Particularly since Sam antagonizes him at every turn. You remember what happened when he gave that demonstration at their flat in town. Can't you imagine what he might do if he really chose to make trouble among a group like us? Or among any other group in the wide world? What do you say, Dr Sanders?'

It was growing darker in the glass-roofed room, hollow with the faint echo of the fountain and full of plants' that had turned to shadows. The orange-red square of the electric fire glowed more brightly. Sanders had begun to understand his invitation to Fourways.

He looked at Chase.

'Tell me,' he said. 'Was it your idea that H. M. and I should investigate this fellow? Find out whether or not he's a fake?'

Chase looked hurt.

'Oh, don't put it like that. Not at all! Both Sam and Mina particularly wanted to invite you.'

'Thanks. And, before we go into this, where are our hosts? I ought to present myself. Having barged in here -'

'That's all right. They're both out. They went over to Guildford to see how the servants were getting on, and to see whether they could dig up anybody to cook a scratch meal or attend to things generally. It's upset Mina, especially with another book on the way -' 'Another what on the way?'

'Book. You know.' Chase broke off. His eyes opened wide, and he knocked his knuckles against his forehead. 'Good Lord alive,' he said; 'you don't mean to say you don't know? I thought everybody knew.'

'Not when you are entrusted with telling it.'

'Mina Constable,' explained Chase, 'is really Mina Shields - the lady novelist, you know. And don't laugh.'

'Why the devil should I laugh?'

'I don't know,' Chase said gloomily, 'except that for some reason all lady novelists are supposed to be funny. Sort of dogma. Anyhow, Mina is a modern Marie Corelli. By that I don't mean anything pompous or flighty or on the preaching side: Mina is the best of good scouts, as you'll see. She may write romances about reincarnation in Egypt or Satan in the suburbs, but she's sound. When she wanted to do a novel about a temple in the middle of French Indo-China, -she didn't trust to the books; by George, she went to French Indo-China. That trip nearly killed Sam; and Mina too, for that matter. They both went down with malaria. Sam says he can't get warm even yet. Which is why they have these portable fires blazing in every room, and the place is like an oven. Don't open too many windows, or you'll have him on your neck.'

Hilary spoke with a certain intensity, looking over her shoulder at the spray of the fountain. 'Yes. I dare say you will.' 'Now, now!'

'Mrs Constable is fine,' said Hilary. 'I like her enormously. But Mr Constable - no, I am not going to call him Sam -ugh!'

'Nonsense! Sam's all right. It's only that he's the complete British clubman, and he's a bit fussy.'

'He is at least twenty years older than she is,' Hilary said dispassionately, 'and not attractive in any conceivable way that I can see. Yet the way he orders her about, ticks her off, calls attention to things in public - well, before I would let any man do that to me, I'd go off and take poison in a corner.'

Chase spread out his hands. 'She's fond of him, that's all. Like one of her heroes in the books. He was what used to be called a fine figure of a man before he retired.'

'Which the rest of us can't afford to do,' said Hilary rather bitterly.

'Oh, all right.' Chase started to speak, and then seemed to change his mind. 'Anyway, we might just as well stop talking about them in their own house.' Again he hesitated. 'Look here, Sanders, it's no good denying that bout of malaria changed him a bit, and Mina too. He snaps sometimes, though you can't help liking him. I don't know whether I want this mind-reading fellow to be proved a fake or the real thing. He's Mina's discovery, and she seems to think a lot of him; though I've sometimes wondered if it isn't her sense of humour working. Sam doesn't like him, and there's a kind of undeclared row hovering and darkening. The point is, will you and the notorious H. M. do your best for us?'

CHAPTER II

Sanders was almost himself again. He felt enormously flattered and, for the first time in weeks, cheered.

‘Of course. But-'

‘But what?'

'You seem to have got the wrong idea of me, I'm afraid. I'm not a detective. My work is forensic medicine. I don't see how anything I know or could investigate would apply to this man. At the same time -'

‘Cautious blighter,' Chase explained to Hilary.

'At the same time, it's hard to say what particular branch of science or pseudo-science would apply to him if he were genuine. What is his science? By what rule does he work, or pretend to work?'

'I don't think I understand, old boy.'

‘Well, most of the "mind-readers" I ever encountered have been of the music-hall variety. You know the sort of thing: working in pairs. The woman sits blindfolded, the man goes among the audience. 'What am I holding in my hand?' 'and so on. Then, of course, there's the fellow who works alone, makes you write questions on bits of paper, and reads them from a sealed envelope; but he is usually such an obvious fake that if you have an elementary knowledge of conjuring you can spot him. If he's like either of those two sorts, I can help you. Is he?'

'Good Lord, no!' said Chase, staring.

‘Why the vehemence?'

Hilary Keen made a wry face. 'What Larry means,' she explained, 'is that he's no end of an academic swell. Degrees from all over the place. I'm not necessarily impressed by that, but it's no good denying it carries some weight with regard to his sincerity. - Besides, he's nothing like the sort you describe.'

'Then what does he do? That is to say, he doesn't just look you in the eye and say, "You are thinking of a bathing-hut on the beach at Southend," does he?'

'I'm afraid he does,' answered Hilary.

It was growing darker, a powdery twilight in which the palms of the conservatory became weights of shadow and the orange-red square of the fire stood out with fierce distinctness. Even so, they must have seen the expression on Sanders's face. '

'Aha!' said Chase, nodding with great profundity. 'Shakes you up, does it? Why?'

'Because it's incredible. If s scientific gibberish.' Sanders hesitated. 'I won't deny that in the past there have been certain fairly successful experiments in telepathy. William James believed in it, for instance. So did Hegel and Schelling and Schopenhauer, though recently it has died down from sheer lack of investigation. The trouble is that nothing can be regarded as a scientific fact which won't work at will and all the time, on the same recurring principles; and more often than not telepathy hasn't worked at all. If the operator complains that he is not in the mood, or that "conditions aren't right", he may be honest, but he's not being scientific. - Who is this man, by the way? What do you know about him?'

There was a brooding pause before Hilary replied.

'Nothing, really. Except that he's apparently quite well off and doesn't stand to gain a penny by any of this. Mina met him on her way back from this trip to Indo-China. He calls himself a student.'

'A student of what?'

'Of thought as a force. You must get him to explain. And yet all the time,' said Hilary, her soft voice tautening and sharpening, 'I've got a feeling that there's something not quite right about him. I don't mean as regards his being a fake; but something at the back of his own mind. Worry? Self-consciousness? Inferiority complex? You have a feeling that he regards this thought-reading as only a kind of minor prelude to something - Oh, I don't know! Talk to him; that is, if he will'

'I should be only too pleased,' said a new voice.

There was a rustle in the strip of grass outside the conservatory. Twilight touched the stained-glass above, and the long pale oblong of the open window below; and a man moved into that oblong.

The light was not strong enough to make out more than outlines. The newcomer was rather under middle height, with a broad chest, and legs very slightly bowed. You felt rather than saw a smile as he inclined his head. His voice was heavy, slow-speaking, and pleasant.

'Lights. We'd better get some lights on,' Chase said hastily - and Sanders could have sworn that in the way he spoke there was a touch of panic.

He went over and pressed a switch. Under each corner of the glass dome, a cluster of electric globes bloomed like luminous fruit. They had the garish and snaky appearance of such fixtures popular at the end of the nineteenth century; they brought out the garishness of gilt and palms and coloured glass.

'Thank you,' said the newcomer. 'Dr Sanders?'

'Yes. Mr-?'

'Pennik,' said the newcomer. 'Herman Pennik.'

He extended his hand. You would not have found a more unobtrusive or disarming figure than Mr Herman Pennik, despite the curious momentary impression gained from his appearance at the window. He scraped the soles of his shoes carefully on the window-sill to avoid bringing mud into the room. Before shaking hands he even glanced over his shoulder, down at the soles of his shoes as he tilted them up, to make sure.

His age might have been the middle forties. He had a hard-looking head with homely-looking sandy hair; a broad, homely face with leathery wrinkles round the jaw, darkish from hot suns; a broad nose, and light eyes under sandy brows. You saw no sign of strong intellect in that face. There was even a touch of heaviness or coarseness round the mouth. But Herman Pennik had a habit of being incon-spicuous in many things.

He spoke apologetically, with a slight ducking motion of the shoulders.

'How do you do, sir? I am sorry. I could not help overhearing what was said.'

Sanders returned his formal courtesy.

'I hope I was not too frank, Mr Pennik. You don't mind?'

'Not at all. You understand, I hardly know why I am here myself, not being much endowed with the social graces. But Mrs Constable wished me to come, and here I am.'

He smiled; and Sanders felt the pull of a curious psychological reaction. In spite of righting against it, the very reputation Pennik had created for himself made Sanders uneasy. It surrounded Pennik like an aura; it had to be shaken off; it was formidable and disturbing. It prompted the insidious thought: What if this fellow can read my mind ? For there was certainly a change in the atmosphere,

'Shall we sit down ?' Pennik suggested suddenly. 'Couldn't I get you a chair, Miss Keen? Wouldn't you be more comfortable than sitting on the rim of that fountain?'

'I'm quite comfortable, thanks.'

·You're - er - quite sure ?'

'Quite sure, thank you.' t

Though she smiled, Sanders felt that she also sensed another quality about Mr Herman Pennik. His manner underwent a change when he spoke to her; his words were clumsy; he had the air of an embarrassed small boy; and afterwards he sat down hastily in a wicker chair.

Immediately he was easy again, though Sanders noticed that he took a deep breath.

'We were just telling the doctor,' began Lawrence Chase, tall and lean and now revealed as going a trifle bald, 'about some of the things you've done.'

Pennik made a deprecating gesture.

'Thank you, Mr Chase. And did he seem - responsive?'

'To tell you the truth, I think he was a little shocked.' ' Indeed? May I ask, sir, why you should be shocked?'

Sanders had begun to feel dogged; it was as though he and not Pennik were on the defensive. At the same time, he wished the fellow would keep those damned eyes away from him. And curse all these undercurrents. All the time this was going on, Sanders found himself catching Hilary Keen's eye, being annoyed with himself, and looking away again.

'I should hardly call it shocked,' he said dryly. 'Startled, if you like. Any person who deals with realities like anatomy -'

'Tut, tut,' said Chase. 'Keep it clean.'

'Any scientist, then, is opposed to a claim which -' He paused. What he wanted to say was, 'a claim which upsets the uniformity of Nature,' but he realized that this would sound pompous and priggish enough to raise a grin. 'To a claim like that.'

'I see,' said Pennik. 'And therefore science refuses to investigate it because the results might prove inconvenient?'

'Not at all.'

Pennik's homely brow was ruffled; but bis eye had a twinkle.

'Yet you yourself acknowledge, sir, that successful experiments in telepathy have been carried out in the past?'

'To a certain extent. But to nowhere near the extent you claim to have carried them.'

'You object to my making progress?-Surely, sir, that is as unreasonable as saying that because the first experiments in wireless telegraphy were incomplete though successful the matter had better be dropped?'

(Be careful. He can give you points and a beating if you let him go on like that. The argument by false analogy is an old one.)

'That's what I was coming to, Mr Pennik. Wireless telegraphy is based on principles which can be explained. Can you explain yours ?'

'To the proper listener.'

‘Not to me?'

'Sir,' answered Pennik, with a heavy, honest, disturbed look, 'try to understand me. You think I am arguing falsely because I argue by comparisons. But when a thing is entirely new, How else can I argue except by comparisons ? How else can I make my meaning clear? Suppose I tried to explain the principles of wireless telegraphy to a - a savage from Central Asia. I beg your pardon. Comparisons are invidious. Suppose I tried to explain the principles of wireless to a highly cultured Roman of the first century a.d. To him the principles would sound as mysterious as the result; the principles would even sound as incredible as the result. That is my unfortunate position when people demand blueprints.

'Given time, I can explain it to you. The basis is, roughly, that thought, or what we call thought-waves, have a physical force not disimilar to sound. But if it would take five weeks for an educated Roman to begin to understand wireless telegraphy, do not be surprised if you fail to understand wireless telepathy in five minutes.'

Sanders disregarded this.

'You maintain,' he insisted, 'that thought-waves have a physical force like sound?' 'I do.'

'But even sound, scientifically, can be measured and weighed.'

- 'Of course. Notes in sound can shatter glass or even kill a man. The same, naturally, applies to thought.'

He spoke with a kind of toiling lucidity. Sanders's first notion - that the man was mad - he knew in his heart to be wrong.

'For the moment, Mr Pennik,' he said, 'we will pass over the question of whether you might be able to kill a man by thinking about him, like a Bantu witch-doctor. Instead let's get down to plain words that even a person of my limited intelligence can understand. What exactly do you do?’

'I will give you an illustration,' replied Pennik simply. 'If you will concentrate your thoughts on something - anything at all, but particularly a person or idea that bulks large in .your life - I will tell you what you are thinking about.'

This was something like a challenge.

'You claim to be able to do that with everyone?'

‘With nearly everyone. Of course, if you do not assist me,

and try to hide what you are really thinking about, it is much more difficult. But it can be managed.'

It was the complete simplicity of the man which shook Sanders's nerve. He found his own thoughts scattering wildly, bolting into corners, in case they should be seen.

'And you want me to test you?'

'If you will.'

'All right; begin,' said Sanders, and braced himself. 'Then since you have ... no, no, no!' Pennik said rather pettishly. 'That will not do.’ 'What will not do?'

'You were trying hard to sweep your mind clear of all genuine or important thoughts; mentally, you were rushing about to bolt and bar every door.' Don't be afraid of me. I will not hurt you. - For instance, you had decided to concentrate on the marble bust of some scientist (Lister, I believe) which stands on a mantelpiece in someone's library.'

It was absolutely true.

There are some emotions whose effect is difficult to gauge because they are drawn from no source that we could ever have expected. To be 'caught’ in a thought is bad enough; to be caught by some friend who knows you and suddenly penetrates the defence with a guess rouses resentment and a certain helplessness. But to be instantly pinned to the wall, the moment your mind has lighted on the smallest triviality, by a complete stranger who looks at you like a dog who has just retrieved a stick -

'No, no,' urged Pennik, lifting his forefinger and waggling it earnestly. 'May I ask you to give me a broader opportunity than that? The bust of Lister means nothing to you. It might have been the Achilles Statue or the kitchen boiler. Will you try again ?'

‘Wait,' interposed Hilary from her seat by the fountain. Her small hands were closed tightly round a handkerchief. ‘Was he right?'

'He was.'

'Blimey,' muttered Lawrence Chase. 'Women and children will now leave the court-room. As I told you in my letter, Sanders, I didn't see how it could be a trick. It isn't as though be asked you to write on little bits of paper or anything like that.'

'A trick. A trick, a trick,' said Herman Pennik, only half humorously. For Sanders felt that under this dignified lightness Pennik was trying very hard; that deep inside him had been touched some huge inner spring of conceit. In short, he was showing off. And he might continue to show off. 'A trick, a trick, a trick! That is all you — we English seem to think about. Well, Doctor, will you try again?'

‘Yes. All right. Go on.'

‘Then I will try to . .. ah, that is better,' said Pennik. He had been shading his eyes with his hand, and now he peered through the fingers. 'You have played fair and concentrated on an emotion.'

Almost without hesitation, he proceeded to tell about Marcia Blystone on the round-the-world cruise with Kessler.

It was a curious sensation, Sanders felt; as though he were being physically pressed upon, as though facts were being pulled out of him like teeth.

‘I - er - hope you don't mind this,' Pennik broke off. 'As a rule I should not have been so frank. My motto has always been that of Queen Elizabeth: video et taceo'. I see and am silent. But you asked me to tell you what you were concentrating on. We could carry it further if we cared. There were, too, things you were trying very hard to conceal from me .. : He hesitated. 'Shall I go on?'

'Go on,' said Sanders through his teeth.

'I should prefer -'

'Go on.'

'It is more recent,' Pennik told him, with an abrupt and surprising satyr-like look. 'Since you arrived at this house you have been violently attracted to Miss Keen there, perhaps on an emotional reaction. This attraction is the cause of your mood. You have been wondering whether Miss Keen may not be more suited to you than the other young lady.'

‘'I knew it!' said Lawrence Chase, jumping to his feet.

Hilary did not speak; it was as though she had not heard. She continued to look incuriously over her shoulder at the glimmering spray of water in the fountain. The light shone on her rich dark-brown hair and the line of her neck as she turned her head. But her obvious start of astonishment was caused Jess by the words than the tone in which Pennik spoke them.

'Am I correct, Doctor?' Pennik asked, colourless again. Sanders did not reply.

'So you admit it,' said Chase. 'All right, Mr Pennik: what am I thinking about?' 'I'd rather not say.'

'Oh? Now will someone just tell me why I am always accused of having a low mind? Why I am always supposed to be thinking -'

'Nobody said you were,' Sanders pointed out mildly. "That would appear to be the trouble with this game. Our consciences are all over us.'

'Well, then, what is Hilary thinking about?' Chase challenged. 'What is the guilty secret she's been hiding all these weeks I've known her?'

Fortunately, they were interrupted. From the dark interior of the house, past a glass door flanked by velvet curtains, they heard hurrying footsteps and the sound of a rather breathless voice calling to them. The curtains were opened by a little, smiling, hurrying woman with her hat on crooked. This could be nobody but their hostess; and Sanders welcomed her presence with a surge of relief. He was beginning to realize that this game of thought-reading could not be carried too far, or it would end in a smash; yet, with ordinary human perversity, everybody insisted on carrying it too far. That was the trouble. And it occurred to him to wonder: Look here, just what is going to happen before this week-end is over?

CHAPTER III

'I'm so sorry to have left you alone,' said Mina Constable. 'And I'm afraid things are so disorganized I don't know which way to turn.'

Sanders liked the look of her: she restored sane values. Mina Constable had a friendliness and sincerity which seemed quite genuine. She was small and quick-moving, with a wiry strength insensible to fatigue. She had large imaginative eyes, dark-brown in colour; a dark complexion; and black hair cut close to her head. Sanders judged her to be very fashionably dressed, though her hat was put on anyhow. Speak to her, and she radiated charm. Yet he saw that traces of a bad attack of malaria were still present: in the pupils of the eye, and in the difficulty she had in holding to her handbag.

Mina Constable glanced quickly over her shoulder.

'I - er - rushed on ahead to tell you,' she went on in the same rather breathless voice. 'I want to warn you, you mustn't mind Sam. That is, if he seems in a mood. He's had a filthy day, poor old boy; what with that smash and now not being able to get anybody to do for us over the weekend. No, the servants are all right, thank goodness; chipper as you please, and it is rotten for them. You do understand, don't you? Oh!'

Catching sight of Sanders, she broke off. It was Chase who performed the introductions. And Chase, perhaps because he was off guard, showed an unusual lack of tact.

'You needn't flatter yourself, Mina,' he said heartily, putting his arm round her shoulders. 'Here's a fellow who never even heard of you. You're not as widely known as you think.'

'I never supposed I was,' said Mina composedly, and smiled at Sanders.

'He never heard,' pursued Chase with relish, 'of My Lady Ishtar or Satan in the Suburbs or even - by the way, our Mina even tried her hand at a detective story. But I still insist it wasn't very successful. I absolutely refuse to believe in that bloke who carted a corpse all over London and then convinced 'em it really died in Hyde Park. I also think the heroine was a chump, losing her head all the time. Still, if the heroine usually wasn't a chump I suppose there wouldn't be any story; so that's all right.'

This touched Sanders where he lived.

'I beg your pardon: you wrote The Double Alibi? I certainly do know you. And I don't agree with Chase at all. You've probably been asked this till you're sick of it, but where did you get the idea for the poison you used there? It's new, and it's scientifically sound.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Mina said vaguely. 'You pick people up. They tell you things.' She seemed anxious to change the subject. 'It's jo nice of you to come down, but I'm afraid we've let you in for a most awful week-end. How do you like Fourways? It's a lovely old house, isn't it?' she asked, with the candour of pure pride. 'Ever since I was a child I've wanted a place like this. Oh, I know people are supposed to groan when you show it to them; but it suits me. I like the atmosphere. So does Sam; he's so understanding about things like that. Larry, do go and get us some drinks, that's a good fellow. I'm dying for a cocktail, and I know Sam will want a Gin-and-It. Er - won't you, my dear?'

She turned round cheerfully, and Sam Constable followed her into the conservatory.

Mr Samuel Hobart Constable was about to speak, but checked himself abruptly when he saw a stranger. He also was breathing hard. Even the way he checked himself from speaking was ostentatious, as though he could speak but pointedly wouldn't out of good manners. He had been pictured as something of an ogre, but Sanders saw him as only fussy and touchy in the late fifties: over-fed, over-pampered, over-opinionated. Though not tall, he was still strikingly handsome in a grey-and-pink-and-white manner. And even in country tweeds he was so carefully dressed that the disarrangement of a crease would have been painful. After the

impressiveness of his pointed silence, he caught sight of the open window. He looked at them again; he went over carefully, picking each step, and closed the window; he gave them a final look.

'How do you do?' he said - and devoted himself to Sanders to the pointed exclusion of everyone else.

'That's all right, my dear,' said Mina, tapping his arm with great brightness. 'Larry is going to get us some drinks (aren't you, Larry?) and then we shall all feel better. After all, Mrs Chichester has promised to get us something to eat-'

Her husband ignored her. He kept his eyes fixed on Sanders. .

'You have probably heard what happened. Well, young man, you will be lucky to get anything to eat at all. In this house, at least. A certain Mrs Chichester has at last graciously consented to preside: she can't do a proper' dinner, but she promises us a "bit of cold beef" and "a nice salad." ' At the very words, his sallow colour rose. 'Well," that's no good to me. I don't want a bit of cold beef and a nice salad. I want a decent dinner, decently cooked. And since-'

'Sam, I really am terribly sorry,' urged Mina, dragging off her hat and throwing it on a wicker settee. Her anxiety deepened as she plucked at his sleeve. 'I do know how you feel. But this is early-closing day, and except for the cold things there simply isn't anything in the house.'

Sam Constable turned to her with great courtesy, and a certain pompousness in his tubby figure. 'Is that my fault, my dear ?' „ 'Well, with the servants not getting here -' That is no concern of mine. It's hardly my business to go about with a basket buying meat and whatever it is. Do try to be sensible, Mina. If you can make the minutest preparations to drag me through eight hundred miles of malarial swamp (and you should see your own eyes now, my dear), then surely it is not too much to hope for provisions in our own house. However, we must not quarrel before our guests.'

'I will get you a meal, if you like,' offered Herman Pennik.

It was so unexpected that they all turned to stare at him. Chase, who had started out to get die drinks, stuck his head back round the corner of a clump of ferns to get a better look.

And Sam Constable was surprised enough to speak to him.

'You are a cook; my friend?' he inquired, in the faintly contemptuous tone of one who says,' I might have known it.' "That is, in addition to your other accomplishments?'

'I am a very good cook. I cannot do you a hot dinner, of course, but I can prepare dishes that will make you glad it is a cold one.'

Hilary Keen laughed. It was a spontaneous laugh, a release from strain. She got up from the rim of the fountain.

'Oh, good! Well done! - Please sit down, Mrs Constable, and be comfortable,' she urged. 'Honestly, don't you think too much tragedy is being made over the quesdon of getting a meal? If you were as poor as I am you wouldn't feel like that. Mr Pennik shall get the dinner, I will serve it -'

'No, no, no,' said Pennik, shocked. 'You serve it? No, I could not allow that. Just leave it all to me.'

'You have made a conquest, Miss Keen,' said Sam Constable.

He spoke with, ponderous gallantry. Whether he was tickled by the idea of Pennik as cook, or whether Hilary's words flattered him by implying fastidious tastes on his ' part, Sanders could not be sure; but Sam was suddenly in a gay good-humour. Mina - who had been looking round hopefully, as though to assure herself .that everybody thought her husband a devil of a fine fellow in spite of his little lapses - became dreamy again.

"Then that's settled,' she declared. "Didn't Dumas cook a dinner for the gourmets of France? I wish I could. I think there's even a chef's cap in the kitchen somewhere: you know, one of those tall white things with the muffin tops. You can have that, Mr Pennik.'

'It will become him,' said Sam gravely. 'But you must give us your word not to poison us. Eh ?'

It was Chase who intervened, swinging out a wicker table with a rasp of legs on the tiled floor which made Sam jump and his brow darken again. On this table Chase put down a tray full of bottles, glasses, and a bowl of cracked ice.

'Oh, he won't poison us,' Chase assured them. 'He won't do that, whatever happens. He wouldn't need to.' 'Wouldn't need to?'

'No. He would simply think about us, and - boppo! Gin-and-It, or shall I mix a cocktail?'

'Just what in blazes are you talking about?'

'True as gospel,' said Chase, pouring out drinks rapidly. 'Vote? No cocktail? Right. What about you, Mina? Didn't you want a cocktail ?'

'Anything at all for me, please, Larry. Gin-and-It will be splendid.'

'Mr Pennik,' pursued Chase, 'says that thought-waves are a physical force. Of course we knew that; but now he says that, properly used, they could kill a man.'

Over Sam Constable's face, as he accepted a glass, came a despairing expression. It was as though he said: 'Something. Always something to pester and torment me. Why have all the nuisances got to be piled on me?' Pure pettishness and self-pity boiled up coldly under the surface.

'Indeed?' he said, swallowing noisily in the glass. 'Then you have been playing thought-reading games again?'

'Well, ask Sanders here! Just ask him. Mr Pennik told him to think of something, and got it first shot. He even got it when Sanders tried to hide what he was thinking, including -'

'Other things,' interposed Hilary, with her eyes on the fountain. N

'I wonder if I have got the right man for my money?' said Sam, looking at Sanders over the rim of his glass. 'Young man, you are a medical man?'

'I am.'

'And a consultant to the Home Office pathologist, they tell me?' ‘

Yes.'

'And you hold with all this rubbish ?'

'I don't necessarily hold with anything, Mr Constable. I am willing to admit that Mr Pennik gave a remarkable demonstration, which is a fair description of it.'

Their host jumped to his feet.

'Mina, for God's sake! Will you stop twitching and jittering with that glass, like an old hag soaking up gin in a pub ? If your hands are too shaky to hold the glass properly, put it on the table and drink over the rim. That at least would be more decent than the spectacle you are making of yourself now.'

He stopped, and had himself the decency to look a little ashamed after his outburst. Probably he meant nothing. But there was a cruel scratch in it, for the trembling hands of a malaria aftermath are obvious enough by themselves.

Mina said nothing.

'All right, all right, I'm sorry,' he grumbled. He drained the glass; took another pull at it when it was empty; and sat down again. 'But you people make a fellow feel old. Have a little pity sometimes. I often say Mina will be the death of me yet, dropping things. Nerves. Can't stand it. All the same, what I say is that this thought-reading business is rubbish. It's wrong. It's' - the veins swelled in his forehead - 'it's against everything we've ever been taught. It's against nature, that's all.'

'You will work yourself up so, Sam,' complained Mina. Her eyes shone. 'Don't you see how fascinating it is? And you know perfectly well Mr Pennik told you what you were thinking about when you tested him. Only you would interrupt and shout, "Wrong!" before the words were even out of his mouth. And then afterwards you wouldn't test him at all. I'm sorry, my dear, but you know it's true.'

Her husband looked at her.

'Shall we change the subject?' he suggested, with powerful courtesy. He took out his watch and studied it elaborately. 'Ah, good, good! Nearly seven-thirty. Good time to bathe and dress before dinner -'

"But, Sam, surely we're not dressing for dinner to-night?'

He looked at her again.

'Of course we are dressing for dinner, my dear. Do you see any material reason for altering our custom? If I can dress for dinner among a lot of damned niggers, surely I can dress for dinner in my own house?'

'Of course, if you like.'

'I do like, thank you. Parker would have to choose this night to be in hospital; only man I ever had who knew how to lay out my things properly. But there it is. That's the way things go. You will have to deputize for him, my dear, if you feel equal to the task. Er -' Tilting up his chin, he looked at Herman Pennik. 'I must thank you, my friend, for your offer to get dinner for us. Shall we say, then, that you can have it ready as soon past eight o'clock as possible?'

'If you like,' said Pennik. He reflected. 'But I do not think, Mr Constable, that you will get any dinner.'

The other sat up. 'Not get my dinner? Why the devil shouldn't I get my dinner?'

'Because I do not think you will be alive then,' said Pennik.

It was perhaps ten seconds before the meaning of the words penetrated into the listeners' minds; before sense could be made put of sound. And it was longer than that before anyone spoke.

All through the previous conversation, through each word and jar and gesture, Pennik had been sitting so quietly that they were not even aware of him. Nor had they spoken to him. Now they were aware of him as an entity, perhaps a huge entity. He was sitting forward in his chair, wearing respectable blue serge, his feet crossed, his knees out at an angle, and his hands clasped together so tightly that bluish half-moons showed at the base of the nails. Each small sound was magnified in the bright conservatory: the murmur of the fountain growing to a splash, the scrape of a shoe on tile.

And the conservatory seemed much too cold for such a hot room.

Sam Constable broke the silence with hollow incredulity, like a child; the room came to life again. 'What are you talking about?'

'I said that I did hot think you would be alive by the time dinner is served.' Lawrence Chase sprang to his feet. 'A seizure?' demanded their host, with sudden alarm. 'No.'

'Then will you have the goodness to explain what you mean, my friend? Trying to frighten -' Sam Constable checked himself, peered round suspiciously, and held up his glass. 'I hardly suppose you can mean that somebody has poisoned my drink?' he added with elaborate sarcasm.

'No, I do not mean that.'

'I'll tell you what he means,' said Hilary quietly. 'Mr Pennik, can you tell, or think you can tell, what each one of us is thinking about ?'

'Perhaps.'

'And it's in someone's mind to kill Mr Constable within a very short time?' ‘Perhaps.'

There was another silence.

'Of course,' Pennik emphasized, gripping his hands together more tightly and nodding at each word as though to define his terms. 'I do not say it is certain to happen. I - well, there are reasons. I will lay a place for you at the table, Mr Constable. But you may not occupy it.' He raised his eyes. 'Since you set so much store by the quality you call sportsmanship, there is your warning.'

'Oh, rot!' burst out Chase. 'Look here -'

After an uncertain muttering, Sam glanced up. Then, surprisingly, his jaw came out and over his face crept an expression of fighting humour for which Sanders was compelled to admire him.

'Ah, well,' said their host. 'I thank you for the warning, sir. I shall keep an eye out. But who is going to murder me?