The Reader Is Warned

'I shouldn't believe it, that's all.'

'Well, that's very straightforward and sensible, but it's not much help, is it? Can you imagine what the popular Tress could do with a story like this? No wonder they think it's hot.'

Masters shook his head sceptically. 'I'm not much worried about that side of it, sir. Even off their own bats there isn't a paper in town that'd dare handle a yarn like that; and they certainly wouldn't when they get their orders. But what worries me - urr! - yes, I'll admit it. What worries me is that I think that chap did kill Mr Constable after all.' 'Are you being converted?'

'Not like you mean. Not me. But, Doctor, that chap was sincere. He meant it, or I'm a Dutchman. I can smell things like that. What I mean is that he's, maybe, got a new, Simon Pure, foolproof way of polishing people off, like a new kind of blow to the stomach....'

'Even when it can be proved absolutely that he was downstairs with Mrs Chichester and her son?'

'What we want is facts,' said Masters, doggedly. He considered, and his expression had a far-away gleam. 'So far as I can see, there's just one consolation so far. Lord, how it's going to get hold of a certain gentleman we both know!' And now round his eyelid there was the suggestion of a happy wink. 'Just between ourselves, Doctor, what do you think Sir Henry Merrivale is going to say?'

CHAPTER VIII

'Phooey!' said H. M.

At about the time Fourways was built, certain enterprising decorators made popular an article of furniture or decoration which was known as the 'Turkish corner'. In one corner of your drawing-room you built up a small nook or alcove hung with heavy Eastern curtains, tasselled and thick-draped. These framed a recess filled by a striped ottoman; dim scimitars hung crossed on the wall inside. Sometimes a tiny yellow-glass lantern burned there, but not often. The effect was towards mysteriousness and romanticism -at home; inevitably, the Turkish corner attracted courting couples and also all the dust in the house.

In the gloom of late afternoon, in the drawing-room at Fourways, H. M. sat on the edge of the ottoman and glared.

Even Masters had seldom seen a more malevolent expression on his face. Moving his glasses up and down his nose, he peered alternatively between Dr Sanders and the chief inspector. Occasionally, as he shifted his large bulk on the ottoman, dust would sift down on his bald head and make him look up and swear. But he was too concentrated or too dignified to move. Or perhaps he rather liked the Turkish corner.

'And that's the situation, Sir Henry,' said Masters, almost happily. 'Just offhand, now, what would you say about it?' H. M. sniffed.

'I'd say,' he answered, querulously, 'what I've said before. I dunno why it is. But, Masters, you manage to get tangled up in some of the god-damnedest cases I ever heard tell of. They won't let you alone, will they? You'd think that sooner or later they'd get tired of thinkin' up ingenious dirty tricks especially for your benefit, and go off and pester somebody else for a while. But oh, no. No such luck. Will you tell me why it is?'

'I suppose it's because I get mad so easily,' Masters admitted, with a certain candour. 'Like you.' 'Like me?' 'Yes, sir.'

'What d'ye mean, like me ?' said H. M., suddenly putting his head up. 'Have you got the infernal, star-gazin' cheek to suggest that, I of all people in the world -

'Now, now, sir! I didn't mean anything like that.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' said H. M., brushing the lapels of his coat with immense dignity, and relaxing. 'In all this world there's nothin' but misconceptions, misconceptions, misconceptions. Take me, for instance. Do they appreciate me ? Haa! You bet they don't.'

Sanders and the chief inspector stared at him. This was a new mood: not the plaint, of course, but the dreariness of the tone which seemed to suggest that flesh is but grass, and man travelleth a weary road but to die.

'Er - there's nothing wrong, is there ?'

'What d'ye mean, wrong?'

'Well, sir - this reducing business hasn't affected your health, or anything like that ?'

'I've been makin' a speech,' said the chief of the Military Intelligence Department, inspecting his shoes gloomily. Then he fired up again. 'After all, I was only tryin' to do somebody a good turn, wasn't I ? I'm a member of the Government, ain't I? It was to help Squiffy out. Y'see, Squiffy was to make the speech officially declaring open a new branch railway-line up north. He had a touch of 'flu and couldn't go, so I offered to do it. It was a whoopin' big success, except for a spot of bother coming back. They had a special train. And I discovered the engine-driver was an old friend of mine. Well, so naturally I had to ride in the cab with old Tom Porter, didn't I ? Curse it all, what would you expect' me to do ? Then I said, "Look here, Tom, move over and let me drive the thing." He said, "Do you know how?" I said, "Sure I know how" because I've got a mechanical mind, haven't I? He said, "All right; but take her dead slow." ‘

Masters stared at him.

'You don't mean you wrecked the train, sir?'

'No, 'a' course I didn't wreck the train!' said H. M., as though this were the whole point of the grievance. "That's just it. Only I sort of hit a cow.'

'You did what?'

'I hit a cow,' explained H. M. 'And they got pictures of me arguin' with the farmer afterwards. Squiffy was wild: which is gratitude for you. He said it lowered the tone of people in public life. He said I was always doing it, which is a lie. I haven't been at a public ceremony since I christened that new mine-sweeper at Portsmouth three years ago, and then was it my fault if they launched her down the slip too soon and the champagne-bottle conked the Mayor instead? Burn me, why have they always got to pick on me?'

'Well, now, sir -' began Masters, soothingly.

'I'll tell you what it is,' growled H. M., suddenly coming to the root of the trouble. 'You mightn't believe it. But I've heard rumours. And I've heard there's some low, evil-minded talk about puttin' me in the House of Lords. I say, Masters, they can't do that, can they?'

Masters looked doubtful.

'Hard to say, sir. But I don't see how they can put you in the House of Lords just because you hit a cow.'

'I'm not so sure,' said H. M., darkly suspicious of their capabilities in any direction. 'They're never tired of telling me what a maunderin', cloth-headed old fossil I am. You mark my words, Masters: there's dirty work afoot, and if they can make use of any more accidents, I'll wind up in the House of Lords. On top of that, what happens? I come down here expecting a quiet tag of the week-end after all my heavy labours, and what do you give me? Another murder. Cor!'

'Speaking of Mr Constable's death -'

'I don't want to speak of it,' said H. M., folding his arms. 'In fact, I'm not goin' to. I'll make my excuses and I'll clear out. And by the way, son, where is Mrs Constable ? Where is everybody?'

Masters looked round inquiringly.

'Couldn't tell you, Sir Henry. I just came on from the police-station myself. But Dr Sanders came back here ahead of me...?'

'Mrs Constable,' Sanders told them, 'is upstairs in her room, lying down. Miss Keen is with her. Chase is talking to the policeman they've left posted in the kitchen. Pennik seems to have disappeared.'

H. M. looked uncomfortable.

'So,' he said, 'the lady isn't takin' her husband's death at all well?'

'No. Very badly. Hilary had to sleep in her room both Friday night and last night. But she's better now, and she particularly wants to see you.'

'Me? Why me, curse it?'

'Because she thinks Pennik is both a fraud and a criminal lunatic, and she says you can expose him. She knows all about the Answell case and the Haye case and the rest of them; she's a great admirer of yours, H. M. And she's been looking forward to this; she hasn't talked of much else. Don't let her down.'

H. M. stirred and glowered.

But his sharp little eye grew fixed; he pushed his glasses back up to their proper position, and then peered over them.

'So she says Pennik's a fraud, hey?' he inquired in a curious voice. 'But that's rather rummy, ain't it, son? Wasn't she the one who found Pennik and swore he was genuine and backed up Pennik against her husband?'

'Yes.'

'Then why the complete about-face? When did that happen?'

'When Pennik killed - or said he killed - Constable. When Pennik announced it, that is.'

'Oh? Did she think somebody else ought to have the credit, then?'

Sanders spread out his hands. 'She doesn't pretend it's rational. At the moment she doesn't think; she only feels. She wants to hit out at Pennik in some way. That's why I hope you and Masters will take over and straighten this business out. I've been exposed to the danse macabre for two nights, and it isn't the pleasantest thing in the world.'

H. M. muttered to himself. Then he looked up.

'Masters,' he said, 'this business is queerer than you think.'

'It can't be any queerer than I think,' said the chief inspector. 'Of course, remember one thing. We can't say for certain it was murder -'

'Oh, Masters, my son! Of course it was murder.'

'All the same -'

'Pennik says a man will die before eight o'clock. And a man does die before eight o'clock. Oh, my eye! Don't that nasty suspicious mind of yours, that wouldn't trust your own mother to fill the baby's bottle, at least have a twinge of curiosity about it?'

'All very well, sir,' said Masters, stubbornly. 'That's what the doctor said, and to a certain extent I agree. The question is, how can we prove it when there isn't a thing to show how Mr Constable died ? Wouldn't you allow, now, that as far as proving anything at all goes we're landed in the worst mess of our natural-born lives?'

H. M. lowered his defences.

'Uh-huh,' he admitted.

Getting to his feet, he began to lumber back and forth with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets and his corporation, ornamented with a large gold watch-chain, preceding him in splendour like the figure-head of a man-o'-war. If he had been reducing since Sanders saw him last, it was not apparent.

'All right, all right,' he growled. 'Let's argue this out, then. - Not that I'm takin' it up, mind!'

'Just as you like. But what,' said Masters persuasively, 'what would you say about our friend Pennik, now?'

H. M. stopped short.

‘No,' he said with some firmness. 'I'm not goin' to tell you what I think, if anything. I'm too worried, Masters. The thought of me dressed up in a robe and coronet - son, it's enough to make my flesh creep. If those hyena-souled bounders are really skulkin' in ambush just waitin' for another excuse so they can stick me into the House of Lords, I got to think of a way to circumvent 'em. No. I don't mind listening to what you know about this case, but you've got to tell me what you think.' Masters nodded.

'Fair enough, sir. To begin with, I'm a plain man, and I don't believe in miracles. Except the Biblical kind, which don't count. Now, I've been all over the facts with Superintendent Belcher; and Herman Pennik didn't commit this crime (if it is a crime) because he couldn't have. That's the first step. Next, who else can we definitely eliminate on the ground of alibis? Who else didn't do it?'

His pause was rhetorical.

'I didn't,' replied Sanders, as seemed to be expected of him. 'And Hilary Keen didn't. We can confirm each other because we were together.'

'That's established, son?' inquired H. M.

'Yes,' agreed Masters, 'that's all right. Very well, sir. Stands to reason! - if Mr Constable was murdered, he must have been murdered either by Mrs Constable or Mr Chase.'

'That's nonsense,' said Dr Sanders curtly.

Masters held up his hand.

'Just a moment, sir. Ju-ust a moment.' He turned to H. M. 'There's opportunity, you see. A blow to the body. A crack over the head. Even something that gave the old gentleman a nervous turn and killed him. Any of them could have been done either by his wife or Mr Chase. Neither of 'em has got an alibi. Eh?'

H. M. continued to pace.

'So far,' pursued Masters, 'we've accepted Mrs Constable's story about the old gentleman walking out of his bedroom and throwing a fit in the hall. Belcher accepted it. Colonel Willow accepted it. But is it true ? Dr Sanders didn't see the old gentleman until he was in the last stages of the fit just before he died. The lady could have hit him. The lady could have scared him. - Or, taking it the other way round,

Mr Chase could have hit him and nipped back to his room before anybody saw it.'

Here Masters lifted his finger weightily.

'What's next to be considered, sir? I'll tell you: motive. Who might have had a motive ? Pennik hadn't a motive, not what I'd call a motive; this talk about "scientific experiments" is bugaboo. Dr Sanders didn't have a motive. Miss Keen didn't have a motive. But what about Mr Chase and Mrs Constable?

'Mind, I'm only suggesting here. Mr Chase is a relative, they tell me. Also, from what they tell me, he seems to have been uncommon attentive to a gent old enough to be his father, and not his lively type at all. Is it just possible he gets a good slice of Mr Constable's money ? As for Mrs Constable - we-ll,' said Masters, with another broadly sceptical look. 'I shouldn't want all night with a wet towel round my head thinking of several reasons why she might have wanted out of the way a wealthy husband twenty years older than herself. Eh?’

'May I say something?' asked Sanders.

H. M. nodded, still without speaking.

'It's this. I have never in my life seen a woman more genuinely knocked over with grief than Mrs Constable was.'

'Oh, ah?' said the chief inspector.

'I don't give that as an opinion. I state it as a medical fact. I will take my oath she did not, and never could have, killed her husband. That woman nearly died on Friday night.'

'Of a broken heart?' inquired the chief inspector.

'If you want to put it like that. Masters, you can't fool a doctor with crocodile tears; and she didn't try. She was as genuinely shocked and scared by the death of her husband as Hilary Keen was genuinely shocked and scared by something in her room earlier on Friday night. It was a matter of physical symptoms with both of them.'

Sanders paused.

‘I tell you that before telling you something else, which you will probably find out anyway. It's better for you to hear it from me. On Friday night at about quarter to eight – this part of it you know - something frightened Hilary in the next room. She ran over to me, by way of the balcony outside both windows. When she came in at the window, she knocked over a lamp. Mr Constable heard the row and came down to see what was the matter. As he was leaving us, I said to him something like, " Nobody has tried to murder you so far, I imagine?" He said, "Not as yet. The scrap-book remains on its shelf."

'Wait! I didn't know what that remark meant, and I still don't. I can only tell you one other fact. Under Mrs Constable's bedside table where she probably writes at night, there are a couple of bookshelves; and in among the works of reference there does happen to be a large scrap-book labelled, New Ways of Committing Murder.'

Again there was a silence.

Masters looked very thoughtful.

'New ways of committing murder,' he mused, with rising excitement. 'You know, Doctor, I shouldn't be surprised, I shouldn't be at all surprised, if this may not give us just what we want. Eh, Sir Henry?'

'I dunno,’ said H. M. 'What frightened the gal ?'

'Eh?'

'I said, what frightened the gal ?' repeated H. M., pausing in his stumping walk and turning a face of exasperation. 'This Hilary Keen you've been talkin' about. Everybody seems to know she got a fright; but nobody seems to know what did it. Or even care what did it. Didn't your friend Belcher ask her about that?'

Masters chuckled, leafing back through his notebook.

'Oh yes, the superintendent asked her. He's got a nasty suspicious mind, if you like. He wanted to know what she was doing in Dr Sanders's room. She said she'd suddenly got the wind up, about Pennik's prediction and everything; she couldn't stand being alone any longer, so she ran next door to the doctor's room.' He hesitated. 'Nothing in that, is there?'

'Oh, Masters, my son! Why go by way of the balcony?' 'Well, there's that, of course.'

'There is. Balconies are messy and full of dirt. Climbin' through windows is messy and undignified. If you want company, why do that when all you've got to do is walk down a hall and open a door? Furthermore, she smashes a lamp and Sanders here says she was in a state borderin' on real collapse. It looks as though there must have been something or somebody between her and the door.'

Outside the long windows of the drawing-room, the afternoon light had grown dull and chilly. It made the polished floor a pale lake across which their shadows moved. But it did not penetrate far among the curtains or the spidery furniture; and, under a white marble mantelpiece, the orange square of the electric heater deepened its glow. So, Sanders reflected, Hilary had refused to tell the police as well.

Then he felt H.M.'s eye on him.

'But she must 'a' told you, son ? Or given you some hint ?'

'No.'

'You mean she refused ?' 'Yes, in a way.'

'Still, you were there on the spot. You must have had some idea what caused it ?'

'No. That is, I thought I had, for a minute; but it turned out to be wrong, so we can forget about it.'

'Hold on a bit, Masters!' urged H. M., waving his hand towards the chief inspector as he seemed about to interfere. H. M. spoke in a new voice. He moved his spectacles up and down his nose. Sitting down on the ottoman, which creaked wirily under his weight, he continued to move the spectacles up and down his nose. He added: 'Y'know, son, you worry me.'

'Worry you? Why?' 'Who is this gal?'

'Miss Keen? I don't know. I've only known her for a couple of days.' 'I see. Fallin' for her, are you?' 'I hardly see why you should think that.' In his heart Sanders had always stood a good deal in awe

of H. M. He thought H. M. was funny; he enjoyed H. M. most when the old man went quite soberly and seriously about foolishness; but even at the moments of grousing he never quite lost that original feeling. He had, therefore, to muster up his nerve to snarl back. . It made no impression.

'Ho, ho,' said H. M. 'I'm a mind-reader, that's why. Now, if Pennik had said that, merely by using his eyes and his intelligence like me, you'd have handed him the gold-plated wizard's cap. It's an old medieval custom.'

His tone changed.

'Oh, I got no objection. And I can tell you who she is. Her father was old Joe Keen, who married that gold-digger out of the Holborn Viaduct chorus when his first wife died. A very intelligent gal, I hear - the daughter, that is. But that's not the point at issue, son. The only point at issue at the moment' - here he looked very hard at Sanders - 'is, who or what did you think frightened her?'

'I thought it was Pennik,' said Sanders, and he told them about the chef's cap under the dressing-table.

Masters was about to interrupt with fiery interest, but H. M. cut him short.

'So? Did you ask her about it, son?'

'Yes, and she denied it, so there's an end to that.'

'Still - a chef's cap's not a very common thing to find under a dressing-table in a bedroom, is it? Did she tell you what it was doin' there?'

'We had other things to think about.'

'You mean she wouldn't answer you ?' ‘

'I mean I did not carry the subject any further.'

'Steady, son. Fair play. What else was there that made you think it might have been Pennik in her room?'

'All this week-end,' said Sanders, rather wearily, 'we've been accustomed to having our thoughts stimulated up to a high old pitch before they were dragged out of us. This was merely the result of it. It was Pennik's attitude towards her, a sort of doglike devotion. He couldn't talk naturally to her, or be quite easy in her presence. He was on to anything that concerned her in a flash. He seemed on the edge of something. I had an uneasy feeling that that whole "prophecy", about Constable's death, came from a wish to show off in front of her. To be frank, when she climbed in my window her state didn't suggest a woman who had been given a merely mental fright.' H. M. stirred.

'So? Humble and unassumin' admirer suddenly goes off the rails.' He hesitated. 'I say, Masters, I don't like this.' He hesitated again. 'Still - she's not what you'd call the fainting type?'

'No.'

'And that,' the chief inspector intervened, 'was why you asked Pennik this morning whether he'd been upstairs on Friday night, Doctor? Just so! Which he denied.'

'Which he denied,' agreed Sanders.

H. M. scowled.

'It still bothers me. You'd have thought she'd have been able to handle a situation like that a bit more firmly, wouldn't you? I'm not goin' to generalize. Women are apt to say they'd do one thing if somebody went berserk, and then do something else altogether when it happens. But it still bothers me like blazes. Supposin' it wasn't what you thought it was: what could Pennik have done to her that would have scared her as much as that?'

That had hit it.

It was, Sanders knew, what had been subconsciously worrying him since Friday night.

'But she says it wasn't Pennik,' he pointed out, 'and in that case I'm betting it wasn't. We don't know who or what it was. All we do know is that she was frightened.'

'S-s-t!' said Masters, quickly.

They all looked round, for there were footsteps on the unglazed tiles of the hall outside the door. Lawrence Chase, straight-backed and at case, came in with his brisk walk which seemed to push the floor away behind him like a man climbing a ladder. He was smiling, and he eyed the newcomers with frank interest.