The Reader Is Warned

But Masters was pleased. 'How do you feel, Doctor?' he asked jocularly. 'No sudden palpitations of the heart coming on? No cold sweats or what not? Lummy, it did my heart good, and that's a fact! I mean to say, giving it to him bang in the snoot when he was so sure you wouldn't.'

'You think this is funny?' inquired H. M. 'Shut up, Masters! Now listen to me, son. Why did you do it?'

Sanders rose to this.

'Well, who does Pennik think he b, anyway ? A sort of god. who can walk about telling people when they'll die and whom they'll go to dinner with? His Teleforce is rubbish and you know it as well as I do. All right: let him go ahead and press the switch. We'll see what happens.'

'H'm,' grunted H. M., scratching the side of his jaw. 'Got the wind up, have you ?'

Sanders was honest.

'Yes, in a way I have. A little.' "Then why did you do it?'

(Why not admit it? Why not acknowledge that Hilary's blue eyes, Hilary's laugh, Hilary as she appeared to him in imagination now, had brought this about inevitably? Where Hilary was concerned, he and Pennik were like two dogs round a bitch. The simile was not a pretty or pleasant one; and he disliked himself even for thinking of it in connexion with Hilary; but, if you faced it, it amounted to that. Nor was there anything of the preux chevalier about Pennik. Pennik would kill him if he could, and that was that too. He remembered Pennik calling for his hat and coat, bowing, and walking quietly out of the restaurant into the rain; in itself, when you remembered Pennik's past behaviour, the most dangerous sign of all.)

Sanders looked up. 'Haven't you got any idea why I did it?'

'Me?' said H. M. 'Oh, sure. If s not insight I lack, if that needs any; it's the ability to prevent people doin' fat-headed things after I've expressly warned 'em not to. Pennik was waitin' for you. I hope you noticed that? But, oh no. Down went the gage of battle on the floor, and I hope you're feelin' proud of yourself. In spite of all the signs and warnings for five days -'

'But-'

' - you still couldn't take a hint. Why do you think that gal, Joe Keen's daughter, has been going about with Pennik and pampering his vanity so religiously? It's to prevent just exactly what happened this afternoon. It's to prevent Pennik from roundin' on you.'

The wheels of the train ratded and clacked under them.

'Do you mean that?' Sanders asked quickly.

‘Oh, son, do I mean it! Sure I mean it. I know it. Don't you realize Pennik wants you out of the way? Don't you know he's been waitin' for a legitimate excuse to show his claws? That's the trouble. Pennik, within his limits, is a perfectly honest man.'

Chief Inspector Masters made a noise.

H.M. looked at him.

'He is, though, Masters. You give me just one more raspberry, and I'll chuck this case straight back at you.'

'Now, now, Sir Henry! All I meant -'

'Pennik's got a conscience. I admit he can be pretty unpleasant at times. I've also got a suspicion he's going off his onion; and, unless somebody can right him, he'll go completely off it. But he honestly has got a conscience, that bothers him about Sanders. Little devil says yes. Conscience says no. Little devil says, "Go on; soak him." Conscience says, "No; if you did that it would be out of pure jealousy of anybody who comes near her, and would show you were no superman." Little devil says, "It'd be in the interests of science." Conscience says, "Science my foot." But now you've given him an excuse; and conscience goes overboard. He'll make you the next victim, if he can.'

Masters looked even more worried.

'Hold on, sir! Does that mean you think he will do it?'

'If he can,' repeated H. M. stubbornly. 'No, I don't go that far. I'll give you consolation. In point o' fact, I think Sanders is pretty safe -'

'Yes, sir, that may be all very well,' the chief inspector objected. 'But that's what you said about Mrs Constable too; and she's as dead as King Tut now.'

'You're a fine pair of Job's comforters, aren't you?' interposed Sanders, not without reason. 'A couple of damned old ghouls, if you will excuse the plain speaking. Would you like to order my shroud now, or can it wait until we get back to town?'

H. M. was soothing.

'Now, son, you're all right. You'll be quite all right if you-'

'I know. If I just trust the old man. Very well; consider the trust applied.' He brooded.

'All the same, up to now I always believed I lived in an ordered, ordinary world where nothing much ever happened. I rather envied Mar - that is, I envied people who could travel on voyages to Japan. In actual fact, nothing much has changed. I still eat and sleep as usual. All the wallpaper looks the same, and I don't get any more money. But I feel I've stepped over into a new kind of world where anything can happen.'

'That's what we shall all be feeling,' the chief inspector decided gloomily, 'if all this flummery about Teleforce is allowed to go on. Teleforce! Did you hear 'em back at the railway station? And that woman sticking her head out of the train window? And at the book-stall. I wish we'd had time to get an evening paper, though. We might see if we can get one when the train stops next.'

Obediently the train did stop, with a sudden flight and an equally sudden pull-up like a ballet dancer. Masters disappeared into the streaming dimness and returned with an armful of newspapers.

'H'm,' said H. M.

There was a brief, rustling pause after the train had pulled out again. 'This,' said H. M., 'is pilin' Babel on top of Pisa. The scientific swells have now weighed into the controversy. "Professor Huxdane, interviewed, consented to say one word: 'Balderdash.' (That'll make Pennik foam.) Professor Trippletts, on the other hand, while admittin' the theoretical possibility of such a weapon, says that the idea is not new. (That'll make him foam still more.) Yes, good enough.' H. M. glowered at Sanders. 'If only you hadn't butted in! If only you had kept quiet in front of Pennik!'

Dr Sanders sat back.

'One question,' he said. 'Will you tell me why I am the villain of the piece? Why pitch into me? I've offered to call Pennik's bluff for you in the only possible way. Instead of giving me at least a word of thanks, you're going on as though I had spoiled some scheme of yours.'

'You have, son.'

'How?'

"That's the blinkin' awful cussedness of it,' said H. M. wearily. 'I was being crafty; I had everything all planned out. I was goin' to snaffle Pennik just like that.' He snapped his fingers. 'At least, I had a forty-sixty chance to do it, which is the most you can hope for in this world. Now you've reduced it to ten-ninety. Oh, my eye. That's why we're goin' down to Fourways in such a rush. I've got two more chances -'

'To get Pennik?' demanded Masters.

'That's right.'

'To get him when ?'

'To-morrow, if we're lucky.'

Masters eyed him. 'Well, you'd better not be too long about it, sir. Mind, I don't for a minute believe a word of all this rubbish. All the same, what if Pennik decides to polish off the doctor here before then?'

'No,' said H. M., shaking his head quite seriously. 'There's twenty-four hours' grace there. Pennik won't move until he makes his speech at Paris to-morrow night -'

'Ha, ha, ha,' said Sanders.

'Be quiet, will you?' ordered H. M. with austerity. 'You're not in this. And, as I was sayin', Masters, until he gets ready to bust his bombshell on the floor then. We're all right for the moment.'

'I hope you know what you're doing, sir. But I tell you straight. I'm beginning to think you're clean daft. You don't mean you're going to let him make that speech ? You can't mean that. I can think of half a dozen ways to stop him; easy ways, eh?'

'Tut, tut. Why stop him?'

Masters grew very quiet.

"Then there's another thing,' the chief inspector went on, his eye and brow darkening with suspicion. He held up a newspaper. 'Have you seen this? The Evening Planet?'

H. M. said, rather guiltily, that he hadn't. He asked what was in it.

'I'll tell you what's in it,' replied Masters. 'There are two pictures of me in it. "Chief Inspector Masters as Himself." Then, "Chief Inspector Masters Disguised as an East End Tough." The picture of me as myself looks about fifty times tougher than the one of me disguised as an East End tough.

But never mind that. I've been (as you would say) sitting and thinking, and blowed if I can remember more than one person who had a copy of that picture of me disguised. Did you give it to this paper?'

'Now, now.'

‘Did you?'

‘Just keep your shirt on, Masters.'

‘I'll try to. I've had a bit of an idea, too, that it was you who wrote that full-column letter in the Daily Wireless, Now I don't say you're as mad as a March hare, sir; I don't say it. But when they stick you in the House of Lords I only hope I'm in the gallery to see, that's all. And what are we doing now, going down to Surrey? What do you expect to find there?'

H. M. was stubborn.

‘For one thing,' he insisted, 'I got to find that press-cutting scrap-book of Mrs Constable's.'

‘Oh, ah ? That? In spite of all I tell you, you still think it's in the house?' ' 'Yes.'

‘And where do you think of looking for it?' 'That's just it. I dunno.'

Masters gave him up. The blurred windows of the compartment whitened with lightning, and thunder descended like falling masonry to mingle with the rattle and click of the wheels. None of them spoke until the train drew in at Camberdene, where Superintendent Belcher, in response to Masters's telegram, was waiting for them with a car.

And none of them, perhaps, liked driving through the open country in a thunderstorm. Fourways looked as black as the rain when they drew up before it, and the grounds had turned to a swamp. It was more than ever a gutted house, a hollow house, a dead house. Superintendent Belcher had a key to the front door; inside, the rain on the roof sounded like a heavy hammering.

'Now that we're here -?' suggested Masters, when they had turned on a blaze of lights.

H. M. peered round the front hall.

'Don't hurry me. Lemme think. Ah, I got itl When you looked for that scrap-book, what about the conservatory? Did you give the conservatory a good going over ?'

'You can bet we did. If you're thinking the book may have been hidden under one of the plants, that's out too. We didn't uproot 'em all, naturally; but the soil in those boxes and pots was so dry that we'd have noticed any disturbance.'

'All the same, let's have a look.'

Drawing-room, dining-room, conservatory. All as Sanders remembered them on the night Mina Constable died. On the dining-room table, under the glowing mosaic dome, the fragments of broken glass still lay in a sticky dried puddle where Sanders had dropped the tumbler when he thought he saw Pennik looking at him.

They re-created the past like a scent or a sound.

Pennik couldn't do anything. Pennik was a burst bogey. Pennik had been told off to his face. All the same -

H. M. had opened the glass door to the conservatory, and was bending close to blink at it.

'If you're looking for finger-prints,' observed Masters with a sour grin, 'you can save your eyesight for brick walls. There aren't any. Yes, I know the doctor said Pennik shoved his nose and his fingers against that glass; we didn't neglect that. But either they were wiped off afterwards or else they never were there.'

Sanders refused to be drawn. . 'So now I'm accused of seeing things?'

'Don't forget the astral projection,' growled H. M., wagging the door back and forth. 'I say, son. Did you see anything of Pennik except his hand and face?'

'Not clearly, no.'

'Did you hear him when he ran away?'

'No, I can't say I did. But I'll swear he was there; there was no jiggery-pokery about that.'

Pennik couldn't do anything. Yet his image, huge and ugly and dead-looking, seemed to gather and spread through Fourways.

It was Masters who pushed past H. M. and found the switch in the conservatory. The clusters of luminous fruit bloomed again under corners of the glass roof; and the din of rain beating on that glass dome was so deafening that they had to raise their voices in order to make each other hear. But it was a relief not to see Pennik sitting in a wicker chair among the semi-tropical plants. H. M. wandered to the dry fountain in the middle of the maze.

'Hoy!' he bellowed.

'What?'

‘A very important question, son. When you saw Pennik through that door on Sunday night, and ran out here, was this little fountain working?'

‘No.'

'You're sure of that, now?' insisted H. M., poking out one finger.

'I'd swear to it. I remember how dead quiet the place was. What's more, I remember passing the fountain. But why?'

'Only,' said H. M. mildly, 'this. If that's so, it's one of the most important pieces of evidence in the case.'

Masters was at his side in a hurry. 'Steady a bit! An important piece of evidence? You think that's important with regard to whether Pennik was or wasn't here? Or has anything to do with explaining his being here? But what about the fountain ? It's an ordinary Gamage garden fountain; pumps up the same couple of gallons of water and uses 'em over and over again. I had a look at it, because I was thinking of buying one once myself.'

'Whether you were thinkin' of buyin' one or not, Masters, it's still important. And I don't care how it works! That's not the point. Now let's see.' He sniffed round the overgilded, over-decorated lounge. 'Any more doors here? Ah! One. Goes to the kitchen, does it? I thought so. But there don't appear to be any back stairs. Make note of that: no back stairs.'

H. M. was peering into the- kitchen. Again Masters followed him.

‘But-’

'On the other hand,' persisted H. M., muttering rapidly to himself and making fussed gestures to keep Masters away, 'our late friend Sam Constable's bedroom is directly over the dining-room back there. I seem to remember Mrs Constable tellin' me that. Yes. Also, I seem to remember seeing a balcony outside one of his bedroom windows, with stone stairs leadin' down to the ground. (If you don't get away, Masters, I'll murder you.) So you could go from the dining-room to that bedroom upstairs without being seen; and come down again too. If we -'

'God!' said the chief inspector involuntarily.

It was not the glare of lightning through the glass roof which made them all jump, though it turned the whole conservatory to a blaze of deathly daylight and put the same pallor on their faces. It was, instead, the enormous crash of thunder which began in a long splitting noise as though the glass roof were crumpling, and then exploded close over their heads to the end of the peal. The dome vibrated to it; one of the small panes in the roof did, in fact, fall and smash on the tiles; and the rain poured through. But all sights or sounds were entangled with each other and happened at once. They saw each other's faces in such pallor because, in the instant of the lightning-flash, every light in the house went out.

'That's torn it,' said H. M.'s voice out of the dark.

Superintendent Belcher's voice spoke cheerfully. 'It's all right. I've got an electric lantern here. What was it, do you think? Wires down outside, or a fuse blown?'

Masters was not so easy. The shock of that assault still made the room tremble, and the darkness was dense. He spoke loudly above the rain.

'Wires down outside, I should think. They've got so many extra fittings that they're on distributing fuses, one to two or three rooms; and you wouldn't blow out the whole lot at one go unless -'

'Fuse-box,' said H. M. suddenly.

‘What's that, sir?'

'I said fuse-box. Masters, when you went over this house so thoroughly, did you look inside the fuse-box?'

'No; why should I? I'll swear it wasn't touched before or after Mrs Constable's death -'

'I wasn't thinkin' about it in connexion with anybody's death. I was thinking about it,' answered H. M.'s voice in the dark, 'as the one perfect hiding-place for a flat book eighteen inches high by ten inches broad.'

After a pause he added:

'Where is the box?'

'As a matter of fact, it's at the back of the cupboard in Mrs Constable's bedroom,' said Masters. 'And we're going up there now.'

The beam of the superintendent's lantern went ahead of them. In the forlorn bedroom upstairs, and in the side of the room furthest from the bed, was a large wardrobe cupboard with folding doors. Just above the shelf inside was the black-painted iron cover of the box, held upright by two light screws: a large box, some two feet high by a foot and half broad. Standing on a chair, Masters carefully undid the screws. As the cover fell, a tall thin book in colours of black and gilt flopped out into bis face, and dropped with a thud into the cover again.

'So that's it,' snarled Masters.

'That's it, son. Serene and untouched where Mina Constable shoved it away as long ago as the night her husband died. Also, the perfect hidin'-place. You look at a fuse-box; and it never enters your head that there could be anything inside it except fuses; it's all too snug and close. But the cover don't fit in close against the contents: it can't. And if you want a place to hide your money where no burglar will look for it, take a tip from Mina Constable. It was one of her -more ingenious ideas.'

Masters jumped down from the chair.

'Ingenious ideas, eh?' he said, and shook the book in the air. 'Just so. Got the bounder, anyway!' He shook it more savagely. 'You think this is what we want?'

'Yes. Maybe. If it contains what I hope it does - Masters, we've got Pennik. Put it down on the table and let's have a dekko at it.'

The light was held for them. While the rain splashed the windows, Masters put New Ways of Committing Murder on the dressing-table, and the others bent over his shoulder when he opened the book.

It was a grisly exhibit, in its way. It contained, neatly pasted in, a long series of press-cuttings all dealing with violent death in one form or another. They seemed to have been collected over a period of seven or eight years. Some were so old as to have had the paper turn dingy; others were frayed or ragged as though they had lain long in a drawer before their owner decided to make the collection; still others looked fresh. Though in a few cases the date and the name of the paper had been written above the article, as a rule they bore a question-mark or were left blank. Some were from popular magazines; one or two from a medical journal. Not even any chronology in dates had been kept; 1937 came before 1935, and 1932 turned up between both. Over everything you could see the clever, untidy mind of Mina Constable.

H. M. had already uttered a groan. But he uttered a deeper one when they found, on die last page but one, an oblong piece of the page - article, name of paper, and date, if any - jaggedly cut out with a pair of scissors.

'She was takin' no chances,' said H. M. 'And she could burn that much of it, anyway. Masters, we're licked.'

'Did you hope for as much as that from the book?'

'I don't mean it does us down entirely. Humph, maybe not. But I sort of had a feeling that I could prove I was right to myself, and prove it to other people too. If there'd been one little thing in this book, just one little thing...'

He tapped it with his finger. Afterwards he blundered across in the dark and sat down in a big chair. Faint lightning showed against the streaming windows behind him.

Masters shook his head.

'Afraid it's not much good, sir. If we had any ghost of a line to work on at all, I could have put the organization to work and it's ten to one we'd have run down the press-cutting you want. But there's not a ruddy thing to go by! We don't know what paper it might have been in: not even the country, because there are American and French here too. We don't know the day or the month or even the year. We don't even know what kind of an article we're looking for. If,' - the chief inspector's voice yelped out with exasperation - 'if you could just give me some idea what line you're working on, and what it is you want to prove?'

H. M. put his head in his hands. Dimly they could see that he was ruffling the two tufts of hair at either side of his temples.

'Uh-huh. Sure. I know all the difficulties. Mina Shields didn't have a secretary. She didn't even subscribe to a press-cutting bureau; I took mighty good care to look into that. As to what I want to prove, I can tell you short and sweet.'

‘Well?'

'I want to prove that a person may be dead, and yet at the same time be alive.'

There was nobody in that room who liked the surroundings any better for this remark. Nor was the situation improved by H.M.'s ghostly chuckle.

'Ho, ho. So you're convinced I'm off my onion at last, are you? Ruin of noble intellect. No, my lad. I mean exactly what I say. You're also overlookin' the motive in this case.’* You wouldn't believe me when I told you there was such a thing as a Judas Window; but I showed you one, didn't I?'

'Maybe you did and maybe you didn't. But you're blooming well not going to show me a living corpse, and neither is anybody eke. Not while I keep my own sanity you won't. I'm fed up, Sir Henry, and that's a fact. I thought you'd gone the limit before, but this beats anything I ever heard of. You can take your astral projections and your

*‘ A very just remark, I can see now. The motive for murder, though fully indicated in the text, is not obvious on the surface; and it involves indeed, a legal point. Anyone interested in solving the problem may be advised to look carefully below the surface. The reader is warned. - J. S.