The Reader Is Warned

'Yes,' said Sanders.

'And still no sign of what caused death?'

'No. Except that she was so chronically run down in every organ, so burnt out except for actual physical strength, that she was the easiest possible victim -'

'For whatever it was?'

'Yes.'

'Uh-huh. Finally, I want your whole story. I want to hear everything that happened to you on Sunday night, after we left you to your fate. And Mrs Constable to hers, God help us! Now tell me: slow, steady and careful.'

Sanders told him. It lasted through the soup-course and half-way through the beef; it was the dozenth time he had told it, but he omitted nothing. H. M., his napkin stuck firmly into his collar, listened while he ate; occasionally he would stop and peer over a loaded fork. What parts of the story struck him as significant Sanders could not tell, though at times his eye was curious.

At the end of it H. M. put down his knife and fork.

'So,' he muttered, folding his arms. 'So!'

'It'd seem, sir,' interposed Masters, 'it'd seem we may have made a bit of a mistake about Mrs Constable.'

'Oh ? And that makes you still more dubious, hey ? If I'm so cocky about thinkin' I'm on the right track in this business, I got to explain how that mistake came to be made, haven't I ? I wonder if you can guess.'

'I don't want to guess; I want to know. That's to say, if you know.'

H. M. reflected.

'We'll round this up. Tell me, Masters: is it absolutely certain that Pennik's alibi for Sunday night is air-tight?' Masters nodded firmly.

'Not a doubt of it. He put up at the Black Swan, as he said he was going to. You remember that you and I went over there and tried to see him; but he got on his high and mighty horse and refused to see us.'

'Well?'

'Well, he arrived at the Black Swan at about nine o'clock. From that time on, until he went to bed at well past twelve, he was never out of the sight of at least two witnesses. Oh, ah! Did it deliberately, of course. He kept a group of them up on a little drinking party after the bar closed. They thought he was a bit touched in the head, and you can't blame 'em. Frothing at the mouth, and so on -'

'Did he do that?'

'He did. They even kept him in sight when he was making his telephone calls, though there was a lot of noise and he spoke low and they didn't hear what he was saying. However, from nine o'clock to well past twelve he's definitely got an alibi that can't be shaken.'

Masters paused. He drew a deep breath. Then his blood-pressure went up like a thermometer.

'I know it can't be shaken,' he repeated. 'The only trouble is that Dr Sanders here swears he saw Pennik prowling through Fourways at half-past eleven.'

There was a silence. H. M. looked round at Sanders.

'You're sure of that, son?'

Sanders nodded. On that rainy afternoon, even in the crowded and noisy restaurant, the atmosphere of the twilight house was back' again. He too well remembered the nose and five fingers pressed against that glass door to the conservatory, and Pennik's face behind.

'Yes. It was either Pennik or his ghost or his twin brother.'

'His ghost, maybe,' commented H. M. without inflexion or surprise. 'Sort of astral projection. I told you he was mustard.'

'Astral projection be blowed,' said Masters, going more red. 'Only - lummy! Are you telling me, sir, that he not only can polish people off without a mark left on their bodies, but he can send his ghost to do it for him? Are you telling me that?'

'Well, how do you explain it?'

'I don't,' said the chief inspector. 'Not yet. All I know is I'm going mad. I'm slowly going stark, staring, raving -'

'Now, now!' urged H. M., giving a deprecating look round over his spectacles, and turning back to Masters with a soothing air. 'Just keep you shirt on, and stop poundin' on that table. Be dignified. Like me. Ho, ho!' A ghoulish grin went over his face. 'I'm as dignified as even Squiffy could want. Eat your cheese and think of Marcus Aurelius. How's everything at home ? How's the kid ?'

Masters's face lit up.

'Survived the operation beautifully. Everything's fine, I'm glad to say. Mrs M's with her now. I've been running about a good bit -'

'Sure. So your brain won't work.'

'Much obliged, sir.'

'That's all right. Looky here. I'm trying to extract from you your meed of information. The last time I saw you, you had only one object. The last time I saw you, you were goin' bald-headed to find something out about Pennik. Have you found out anything about him?' Masters was himself again.

'Ah! I have, just a bit. Not much, but I'm grateful for anything.' 'Well?'

'Part of it I got from Mr Chase, and part of it by a piece of luck from the proprietor of the Black Swan Hotel.' Masters frowned. 'As you say, the trouble so far has been to find out something about Mr Ruddy Pennik, who he is or what he does or where he comes from. I saw Mr Chase yesterday. He seems to be the only person now remaining alive who knows anything at all about Pennik.'

H. M. opened his eyes.

'Very cheerin' thought, that is. I hope it comforts him.'

'As a matter of fact, sir, I - hurrum! - I asked Mr Chase "whether he could manage to drop in here and see us to-day. I thought you might like to talk to him. But that's by the way. I thought of getting a line on Pennik through his universities. Which were Oxford and Heidelberg, according to Mr Chase. But Oxford doesn't know anything about him. And neither does Heidelberg, except that he took a degree there about fifteen years ago, with all kinds of honours for (stop a bit) metaphysics. He spelled his first name with two "n's" then.'

'Did he, now?'

"The only other bit comes from the Black Swan. Now everybody, when they first meet Pennik, gets an idea that he's some sort of foreigner;, but they can't think why. I did myself, and hanged if I know why. The proprietor of the Black Swan thought so, too. He wanted Pennik to sign the foreign-visitors register. Pennik got annoyed, and said no, and pulled out a passport on the Union of South Africa. The proprietor was convinced, but he wasn't certain, so he jotted down the number of the passport on the q.t. Still, I thought it was worth while cabling to get a report, if possible, on the holder of that passport. Eh.'

H. M. grunted: 'Any reply?'

"No, I'm sorry to say.'

'And he scrapes through there too,' growled H.M. ‘Burn me, they won't leave any indications or hen-tracks, will they? Or - will they? Take Mrs Constable's murder, for instance. Even you will admit it was a murder now. We've just heard the story of the funny business from Sanders. I take it you've been all over the ground? Looked for the finger-prints and the stray cuff-links and what not?' 'Lord knows I have!'

'Yes. Find anything?'

‘No, sir, we did not find anything. We combed every inch of the room where that lady died, and every other inch of the place as well, and we got absolutely nothing. Fingerprints? Oh, ah! A whole crop of 'em. But then everybody had been through that place at one time or another.'

He bent forward earnestly, tapping the table with a knife.

'There was the poor lady lying in bed, in a nightgown and that pink dressing-gown, and the bedclothes kicked back. She'd undoubtedly put up a struggle, a real struggle, as the doctor will tell you ...'

H. M. looked up.

'Hold on! A physical struggle?'

The chief inspector hesitated, and looked at Sanders.

'I shouldn't have said so,' the latter replied, with a vivid vision of the bed and its occupant. 'There were no marks or bruises on her, in any case. I should have said a struggle in the sense of a hard seizure like the one she described her husband having had out in the hall before he died.'

There was a slight shiver in the overheated room.

'Yes; but,' argued H. M., 'keeping this to the physical plane, could anybody have got at her for a physical struggle?'

Sanders considered.

'The chief inspector and I have been arguing that It's remotely possible; but I doubt it. I last saw her alive at half-past eleven. I then locked up the room, locking the door to the bathroom and the door to the hall as I went out. After that I sat on the stairs for fifteen minutes. At a quarter to twelve I went downstairs - just as the telephone rang. I "spoke to the newspapers and hurried back upstairs again within (I am sure) two or three minutes at the most.

'Now, this isn't a "hermetically sealed room. The locks on those doors are very old-fashioned and could have been hocussed in half a dozen ways. For instance, somebody could have gone in through the bathroom door while I was sitting on the stairs outside the other door. Afterwards there are several ways by which the murderer could have gone out again by the bathroom door and turned the key from outside, leaving it locked again. Granted. But if she had been murdered by a physical attack at any time while I was sitting at the top of the stairs just outside the hall door, I'm damned certain I should have heard it.'

'H'mf! I You weren't very far away from the door, son ?'

'No. Only about eight feet. And, as Masters says, she struggled violently before she died on that bed. I'm certain I couldn't have helped hearing it.'

'Fair enough. Shut up, Masters 1 And there wasn't a sound?'

'No. Nothing at all. Which means that the attack must have taken place during the two or three minutes while I was downstairs at the telephone. All right; I admit it did. In that case the murderer would have had to get through a locked door, kill Mrs Constable after a struggle by a means that left no trace, and get out again. The murderer could have done that, yes. He could have left the doors locked behind him, as I said a minute ago. But it seems a remarkably short space of time for it to happen in, that's all.'

H. M. spoke slowly.

'So she died alone,' he said. 'Like her husband in the hall.' .

Into Masters's face had come a quiet affability, such a blandness that H. M. regarded him with suspicion.

'Just a moment, sir,' he interposed. 'Just a moment, if you please. Now, you say that there was nobody in that house on Sunday night except Dr Sanders and Mrs Constable. You say there was no third person?'

'I dunno. We're still debatin' whether Pennik's astral projection was there.'

Masters's epithet turned Pennik's astral projection into something much shorter and less dignified.

' - because, sir, I'm in a position to prove - to prove -that there was a third person there.'

'Well?'

'You remember those two green candles on the chest-of-drawers in Mr Constable's room?'

'I do,' said H. M.; and his eyes narrowed.

'Just before you and I left Fourways on Sunday night we had a look into Pennik's room and found him gone. Just so! We also had a look into Mr Constable's room. Just so! You pointed out those two green candles to me, and showed how both of 'em were burned down about half an inch.'

·Get on with it, son! Well?'

Masters sat back.

'After Mrs Constable's death,' he said, 'the same two candles were both burned down another half-inch.'

CHAPTER XIV

'I don't see what it's got to do with us,' pursued Masters. 'Or with the death of either Mr or Mrs Constable. It's not what you'd call a clue.' He chuckled a little. 'Oh, I've had my ideas, I'm bound to admit. What I thought of first off was a poisoned candle. I've read a story (in fact, I've read two stories) in which a bloke was polished off with a poisoned candle. But the doctor here swears blue that neither of the victims died from poison, solid, liquid; or gaseous. And that's good enough for me.'

He raised one finger impressively.

'It proves very little about the murders. But it does more or less prove there was a third person at Fourways on Sunday night. You and I, Sir Henry, were the last to leave; and the candles hadn't been burned their extra half-inch then... I daresay, Doctor, you didn't burn 'em?'

'No. I certainly didn't.'

'Just so.' Here the chief inspector hesitated. 'And no reason, is there, why the dead lady should have burned 'em herself? Stop: I know what you'll say. She might have. Admitted. But why should she? Does it seem likely? No. Unless it was suicide. But then the candles weren't poisoned, so they couldn't have killed anybody. Oh, lummy, lead me to a lunatic asylum.'

At last H. M. spoke.

"That tears it,' he said.

'What tears it?'

'The candles. I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track now. -I say, Masters. Any finger-prints on 'em?' 'No.'

'Any more spots of candle-grease? You know, like the spots on the carpet in Constable's room, whose position I kept pointin' out to you?'

'Nary a spot.'

I-LM. grunted. 'No. I didn't think there would be. This time the murderer was more careful.'

'Was he, now?' muttered the chief inspector, eyeing H. M. with a strained and corked expression. 'So the murderer was in the house on Sunday night, eh? I'm going to talk to you straight, Sir Henry. If you've got any notion how this was done, or how Mr Ruddy Pennik managed to be in two places at once, or what those even ruddier candles mean, tell me flat out and don't talk flummery. I'm not in the mood for it.'

- H. M. grunted again. 'I'm not either, if it comes to that. Burn me, Masters, didn't you ever feel you were just on the edge of something, hot quite seein' it, not quite, but almost getting the -' He slid his fists along the table-cloth. 'Almost! That's all. It's like trackin' back something you've just dreamed. It's a spiritual experience you'd best avoid. Tell me one more thing, and I'll exchange information for information. That big press-cutting scrap-book of Mrs Constable's: have you found it yet?' 'No.'

'Did you look for it ?'

'Ho! Did we look for it?' said Masters, with a certain sarcasm. 'Between me and the superintendent and his men we've been over every inch of that house. And I mean every inch. It's not in the house. But does that surprise me? Not so's you'd notice it. At the end of the week-end, all .the guests walked away from that house carrying bags. It went away in one of those bags, that's all; somebody pinched it.'

'It's a possibility. Sure. The only objection to it from my point of view is that I don't believe it. I said this before, and in spite of all the burstin' dams I'll say it again. Mina Constable hid that book before she was murdered. If I ever saw a thing in a human face, I saw that in hers; and I'll bet you my hat to a tanner it's still in the house.'

The chief inspector mustered all his force of reasonableness; you could see him doing it.

'Dr Sanders!' he said. 'You're the only one who's seen this scrap-book. About how big was it?'

Sanders considered.

'About eighteen inches high, an inch or so thick, and ten or twelve inches broad, I should say.'

'Eighteen inches high,' continued Masters, holding his hand at that height from the floor, 'and ten or twelve inches broad. What you'd call a stunner of a big book. Outstanding. And bound in heavy stiff imitation leather. She couldn't have burnt it, as you said yourself; she couldn't have destroyed it. She didn't leave the house at any time. Would you like to tell me where in the house she could have hidden a big book like that so that we didn't find it?'

'I dunno, son. I'm bein' stubborn.'

'You are. You mean you think it contains the secret of how all this hocus-pocus was worked?'

'Somethin' like that. Maybe.'

'If it does,' said Masters with restraint, 'by George! It ought to be bought for the nation and put in the British Museum. In the first place if s invisible. In the second place it contains the secret of why two green candles are burned every time a person dies. In the third place it shows how Pennik can be in the bar-parlour of a country hotel and at the same time in the conservatory of a house four miles away -'

'Uh-huh. I admit that. Pennik's the problem; and yet, d'ye know, it may not be so difficult after all. From what I've seen of Pennik-'

Masters stopped him. Masters said:

'From what you've seen of Pennik? But you haven't seen him yet! He wouldn't meet us at the Black Swan on Sunday night. You haven't seen him at all.'

'Oh yes, I have,' said H. M, He removed his glasses, which gave his eyes a different, rather caved-in expression of bleariness; it suddenly turned him into a stranger. After looking at the glasses through the light, he replaced them. But for a moment he had really looked like the old man.

'Oh yes, I have,' he repeated. 'Like young Chase on a certain interestin' occasion, I didn't meet him and I didn't talk to him; but I saw him.'

‘When? Where?'

‘Last night, in the Gold Grill Room of the Corinthian Hotel. I'm well treated, I am. I've got two daughters whose greatest pleasure in life is to make me lose sleep. For every extra hour of sleep they can make me lose, it's one up to them. So I got dragged off for an after-theatre supper. And there was Pennik in the Gold Grill Room of the Corinthian, blossomin' out in all his grandeur. Havin' supper with him was Hilary Keen.'

The chief inspector whisded.

Sanders, on the other hand, wondered whether he could ever leave off doubting anything or anyone in this world. He could not decipher the expression on H. M.'s face.

'Well, what of it?' Sanders demanded; and yet jealousy struck as sharp and quick as a dart in a board. 'Why shouldn't she? Though I'm having dinner with her to-night myself, and I hadn't heard anything about it. But I can't afford places like the Corinthian.'

'If I thought,' muttered the chief inspector, 'that that young lady was in cahoots with Pennik -'

H. M.'s weary gesture cut short his excitement.

'Oh, Masters, my son. Nol Pennik's not in cahoots with anybody; Pennik's the lone wolf. But don't you see the real point I'm drivin' at? There she was, all coloured up and half-way out of a gown like my two gals. And yet she was scared, Masters, blind scared and watchin' Pennik out of the corner of her eye even when he only lifted his hand to call a waiter.' He paused.

'As for Pennik, Pennik wasn't too happy about one thing. That grill room's got lots of glare and glitter and red plush, but it's a tiny little place. When it's overcrowded, the effect on the nerves of anybody who can't stand being shut in - like Pennik - must be pretty raw. All that kept him going was to look at her. Y'see, he's fallen for her in a way I don't like one little bit. And that brings us to the point.'

He peered round at Sanders.

'I haven't said much about your affairs, son. What you're beginning to feel for Joe Keen's daughter may be only action-on-the-rebound or it may be the real thing. That's not important at the moment. What's important is this: at the rate things are goin' now, as sure as God made little apples you and Pennik are due to collide with a smash. Had you thought about that?' ‘No.'

'Then think about it, son,' said H. M. sombrely. 'Because once before, Masters tells me - hullo!'

He broke off, drawing his eyebrows together. Hilary Keen in the flesh, followed by Lawrence Chase, had just come through the revolving door of the restaurant, stamping and shaking rain from their waterproofs. Lowering her umbrella, Hilary glanced out rather apprehensively at the street. The storm, which seemed to have been dying down, had swung back again. A glint of lightning looked pale over the solidness of Whitehall; and, with a shake in that curtain, a faint crackle of thunder exploded along the sky and joined the rain.

Chase ducked his head in such a way so to tilt the water from the brim of his bowler hat. He looked up under it.

'Good afternoon, good afternoon,' he said. 'Anybody who says "speak of the devil" will hereby and on the instant receive to-day's cliche" cup. At the same time, I've got a distinct feeling you were just discussing either Hilary or myself. Am I correct? - as Pennik would say.'

Hilary tried to keep up the same light atmosphere. She and Sanders looked at each other, and both looked away again.

'You're quite right,' agreed H. M., beckoning to a waiter. 'Sit down, both of you. Have a coffee with us. And a cigar.'

'I don't want a cigar, really,' said Hilary, taking off her hat and shaking back her rich brown hair. Sanders set out a chair for her. 'And I can only stop a moment. I don't get two and a half hours for lunch like some people. But I was on my way back to Richmond Terrace, and I met this tempter, and - I was curious.'

Chase tossed his cigarette-case on the table.

.. 'As a matter of fact,' he admitted, 'so was I. And still am.’

'Oh, ah?' asked Masters affably. 'About what, sir?'

'If I knew that,' said Chase, 'I wouldn't be curious. About why you wanted to see me, among other things. Is anything else up ? Anything besides what we know, that is ? My God, poor old Mina!'

The edges of his eyelids were pinkish. He hitched his chair closer to the table.

'I wouldn't have believed it. It's the worst mess ever devised by man, beast, or what's-its-name. Look round you. Look out there - newspaper-bills. Look in here - newspapers. That table, and that table, and that table.' He glanced back quickly. 'Er - I say, you don't think anybody knows we're connected with It, do you?'

'Well, sir, they won't if you keep your voice down.'

Chase seemed to dwindle.

'Sorry,' he whispered. 'But I warned Mina, and she wouldn't listen. Ifs not that I think this fellow has any supernatural power; it's only that these things keep on happening. Now I've got to straighten things out. You probably know that Sam was a distant relative of mine.'

'Is that so, now?' inquired Masters, with interest.

'Yes; didn't you see it in the obituary notice? His father's name was Lawrence Chase Constable. I'm a second-cousin.' Chase looked glum. 'Not that I inherit any of his money, worse luck.'

'No?'

‘No. Well, except for a hundred pounds, which hardly

counts. The trouble is, who does inherit it? Am I speaking

in confidence?'

'Entirely, sir. Entirely!'

'Sam's will,' Chase explained, opening his cigarette-case, 'left everything entirely and unconditionally to Mina. But Mina, who never thought of such things, died without leaving a will. And Mina has no kin whatever, not a surviving relative in the world. Which means that legally Mina's estate, and Sam's very large estate on top of that, must revert to the Crown.

'Now that will cause a dust-up for fair, because the whole thing will certainly be contested by Sam's relatives. Not by me, though! In the first place, I'm appointed joint executor and trustee of Sam's estate with an old moss-back named Rich, Sir John Rich. In the second place, Sam's other sur-viving relatives are a sister and two first cousins. If they win their claim, the sister will grab the lot; or what she doesn't grab will be taken by the first cousins; and I should be no- where even if I tried. That's the position, quite frankly. All I get is the dirty work of administering the estate and a kick in the backside whatever happens. Ah, well. The thrice- damned Pennik -'

He straightened the shoulders of his very elegant coat, he lighted a cigarette with concentration, and evidently decided to say no more.

'Bad luck, sir,' consoled Masters.

'Ah, well. It's all in the game. What really matters is that poor old Sam and Mina are both dead.'

·Yes, sir. But-'

'But what?'

The now-too-affable chief inspector produced a metaphorical hand-grenade, examined it, pulled out the pin, and dropped it among them. You could almost see him searching for an excuse to drop it.

Masters frowned.

'Nothing, sir. Only best not to speak too harshly of Mr Pennik in present company. Eh?'

‘Present company?'

'I mean in front of Miss Keen.'

‘Look here, what's Hilary got to do with all this ?'

Masters assumed a heavy air of surprise. 'Well, that's to say: Miss Keen is a great friend of Mr Pennik. Aren't you, miss? After all, going out to a slap-up supper with him on the night after Mrs Constable died -'

Hilary had not spoken.

Her chair was cramped in close to Sanders's, but she did not turn her head. He could see only the smooth line of her hair, cut rather long and curling in below the ears, and the smooth line of her neck above the plain dark-blue dress. But he felt her breathe.

The uncomfortable pause was only prolonged by the-waiter bringing coffee-cups and rattling them.

Then Hilary raised her head. She spoke to H. M.

'Why do you dislike me so much, Sir Henry?' she asked.

'me? Dislike you?'

'Yes. You do, don't you? Is it because you're a friend of Sir Dennis Blystone? Is it?'

'My dear gal, I don't know what you're talkin' about. What's Denny Blystone got to do with this ?'

'Never mind,' said Hilary, picking up a match-box and; playing with it. 'I saw you at the Corinthian last night. Looking and looking and looking and looking. You pretended not to see us, but you even stumbled past our table so that you could get a good look. I suppose it was you who told the chief inspector about it?'

For a moment H. M. did not reply. He seemed oddly fussed. Making a careful selection of a cigar from a tray of boxes the waiter handed round, he growled and glowered.

'Well, y'know ... you were there, weren't you?'

'Yes. Oh, God, yes. I was there.'

'Of your own free will?'

'Of my own free will.'

'And it's a mighty public place, the Corinthian is. At any minute I expected a squad of reporters to come chasin' in and set off a lot of flash-bulbs-'

'As a matter of fact, they did. When we were leaving.'

'And did you like that?'

'No. I hated it,' said Hilary. She put down the matchbox. 'You have a lot of power,' she went on quietly. ‘I mean the power to make other people think and feel as you think and feel. Please don't judge too soon. Please don't jump to conclusions before you know why certain things are done.'

'I'm not,' said H. M. with equal quietness. 'Honest, I wish you'd sort of accept the fact that my gapin' and starin' wasn't at you. And I blundered past your table to get a good look at Pennik's hands.'