The Reader Is Warned

Outside, in the sanded path beyond the open window, there was the stir of a footstep.

Sanders - who was nearest the window - heard it but did not look round. He heard it within a layer of his consciousness, only to be remembered afterwards. For he was too intent on the faces in the bright, ornate room, where the polished oak floor made their own footfalls drown out noises beyond the light.

'It's gone bust, Mrs Constable,' the chief inspector assured her. 'I'd offer you a little discount on miracles right now. Because why? Because we've just learned, from things Mr Chase has told us allied to what Miss Keen has told us, that on at least a couple of occasions our friend Mr Ruddy Pennik was pretending to read minds when he was only passing on information received.'

'I beg your pardon,' interrupted Chase with hot dignity. 'I'm not going to have my words twisted. I didn't say that. You chose to say it.'

'Choose your own terms, sir. I don't mind.'

'If I could believe that,' cried Mina. 'You mean that even his thought-reading was a fake?'

'It was, Mrs Constable,' agreed Masters comfortably. He glanced across at H. M., who throughout all this had said not a word. 'You should have been here, sir. Lummy, it was a treat!' Then Masters's face darkened. 'He gave me a real turn to-day, and I'm not denying it. Talking about my kid! Urr! I'll give him what I think about my kid, and her that's got to have an operation to-morrow! I'd still like to know where he got that little bit. But if you're worrying about

publicity, I'll give 'em a press-bulletin that'll make a proper fool of that gentleman. As for your challenges' - he gave her an odd, dry look whose meaning was not quite clear - 'make 'em or not, but it's waste effort. He won't kill anybody with his ruddy Teleforce, that gentleman won't. He couldn't kill an ant with a fly-swatter. And I'll hand in my resignation to-morrow if he can.' 'Listen!' said Chase abruptly.

The sharp bark of the word made them all fall silent, so that even the emphatic jingle of keys in a pocket, or Masters's still more emphatic snort, died thinly away. This time they all heard the faint rustle in the sanded path outside.

Chase hurried to the window. Sanders, who was nearest it, stared out. Stars had come out in a clear, luminous night; a night when the trees were windless and the air had a clear visibility unrelated to light. Though the path outside was empty, someone was moving away from them, moving slowly in and out under the shadows of the trees.

'That was Pennik,' said Chase, clearly and thinly. 'What do you suppose he's thinking about now?'

CHAPTER XI

'Your breakfast-things,' said Hilary, pulling on one glove, 'are out in a line in the pantry. You can't miss them. The new bread is in the bin on the right; not the left; that's stale. Now, are you sure you can manage? And take care of Mina too?'

'Believe it or not,' Sanders told her, 'I have sometimes in the past had occasion to get my own breakfast. Lord alive, woman! It is not a soul-scarifying experience, which must be approached after a night of meditation and prayer. You just shove a couple of eggs and some rashers into a greased frying-pan; and by the time you have burned your second lot of toast it's done. - As for Mina, she is sound asleep with a quarter-grain of morphia inside her, and won't stir until nine o'clock to-morrow morning. What ails you?'

Something was wrong. And he was speaking in this fashion because he believed he felt the same influence. They waited in the dining-room, under huge dropsical pictures which (if the dark coating could have been cleared off them) might have been pictures of gargantuan hams and vegetables. Sanders's watch said that it was twenty minutes past nine.

Hilary smoothed out the glove. Her bag was packed and waiting. Through open doors to the front of the house they could hear, faintly, a police-car throbbing in the drive.

She pulled on the second-glove.

'We're all deserting you,' she went on. 'Like rats. Like rats off a ship. First the lovely Pennik stays out on the tiles and refuses to come in to dinner. Then Larry Chase suddenly decides he has an urgent appointment and must dash back to London -'

'He has a conference with a solicitor. He told us that yesterday.'

'On Sunday night? At this time? I wanted him to help wash the dishes. He said he never could stand washing dishes. If you ask me, our Larry is shy of things very different from washing dishes. But I'm not one to talk. I'm deserting you, too, aren't I ?' Her jerk at the glove was vicious. 'The thing is, where on earth is Pennik? Why didn't he come in? Do you realize you'll be left in the house with only Pennik and Mina, of all people?'

'Never mind that. I can handle Pennik.'

(He wondered if he could.) .

Yet-at the same time he did not want her to go. Her colour was up, and her blue eyes glittered with nervousness or excitement. She was wearing light grey, a contrast with the colour of the face and eyes; with very little make-up, and a kind of freshness about her like the glow of her skin. He always remembered her like that, under a mosaic dome of lights by the dining-room table.

She picked up her bag with one hand and extended the other.

'Well, good-bye. It has been a week-end, hasn't it?'

'It has.' He took the bag out of her hand.

They were close to the door when she stopped. 'And, Jack. If anything should -'

'Look here,' he protested mildly. 'I am not being locked in the Bastille, never again to see the light of day. I am very comfortably housed. Dr Edge will probably drop, in about ten o'clock, to see Mina. There is beer in the pantry. There is a library I have not yet had time to investigate. Off you go; and we are seeing each other for dinner on Tuesday night?'

She nodded. He went on talking easily; and it was not until they were out in the front hall that he let a hidden worry, a hidden antagonism, flash out. Chief Inspector Masters and Sir Henry Merrivale were coming down the stairs.

'Climb into the car,' he told Hilary. 'Masters will drop you off at the station.' He waited until she had gone out. He even closed the front door so that she was certain not to hear. Then he faced the others doggedly. - 'Can I ask a question without being stepped on again?'

Masters looked surprised. 'A question, Doctor? - Of course,' he returned, with a grin of great heartiness. 'What would you be wanting to know, now?'

'What are you going to do about her?'

'Her?'

'Mrs Constable. Has it occurred to you that she may be in a good deal of danger?'

Never before had he felt so cut off from two whom he considered his friends. Communication was a snapped line, both of thought and feeling. Even H. M., whom he would have trusted to see anything, remained sombre and sour-faced. Masters was bland but positive.

'Oh? Just what kind of danger were you thinking of, Doctor? Danger from whom?'

'From Pennik. I don't think you fully understand that fellow's character. Whether he kills with thought-waves or whether he doesn't, the point is that he's capable of killing. And didn't you hear Mrs Constable's challenge?'

'Mrs Constable's challenge?' mused the chief inspector. 'Yes, sir, I heard it. I've also heard the story about the boy who cried "Wolf!" Haven't you ?'

'All I remember about that story,' said Sanders, 'is that the wolf came.'

'Well, we won't worry about him just yet,' said the chief inspector comfortably. 'And I shouldn't let it worry you either. In fact, if I were you I should just forget all about it-'

There was a silence, while Sanders stared at him.

'But when Pennik comes back -'

'He's not comin' back, son,' interposed H. M. sombrely. 'We've just been up to his room. He's done a bunk. Packed his bag and cleared out while We were havin' a bite of dinner. And he left somethin' behind on the dressin' table. -Show it to him, Masters.'

From his notebook the chief inspector took a folded sheet of notepaper, which he handed across to Sanders. On it was written in ink, and in neat small handwriting:

To the police:

I regret that certain circumstances, no less than those which may arise in the future, make it both inadvisable and inconvenient for me to remain at Fourways any longer. Lest, however, I should be thought to be running from the law, I may say that I mean to put up at the Black Swan Hotel, where I met Chief Inspector Masters this morning. It is the only hostelry I know in this district, and appeared very tolerable in the brief inspection I was able to give it. I shall be available there at any time.

Yours, etc.,

‘HERMANPENNIK

The letter, Sanders thought, contained reason both for relief and further uneasiness. He handed it back. 'But Mrs Constable -'

'Listen, son,' said H. M., in a quiet tone he very seldom used. 'I'd like to be able to think different. But the fact is, d'ye see, that the heroic and grief-stricken Mrs Constable has been tellin' us a pack of deliberate lies.'

Sanders did not know why this startled him so much; or, in a sense, shocked him. He only knew that it did.

'Want to hear what they were, son?'

'Very much.'

'Item,' growled H. M., running his hand round inside his collar. 'Cast your mind back to that little adventure, about fifteen minutes before the murder, when Sam Constable hears the lamp go smash-in your room and comes peltin' down to investigate. Now, two persons gave a minute description of that, didn't they? You heard it. Young Chase described it, and Mrs Constable described it. Chase told us how Constable came rushin' out of his bedroom, in his bare feet and bedroom slippers, stumbling all over himself to get his feet properly into the slippers. We've all had that same experience. We know how it works. It's too circumstantial. It couldn't be a mistake. It's either the truth or a plain lie.'

'Well?' said Sanders - and knew what was coming.

'But what's the lady say, on the other hand? She tells us that when Constable heard the crash and ran out she had just finished tyin' up his shoes for him. So she says he was wearing shoes and socks. Again it's detailed and circumstantial. It's either truth or a plain lie. And I'm afraid, son, that it's a plain lie.'

'Why couldn't Chase be lying?'

H. M. ruffled his hands across his big bald head.

'Because I know liars, son,' he said rather wearily. 'She's not one of the best. But if you want proof further than what's maybe cloth-headed maunderin' on my part, think back! You saw the feller, didn't you? Well? Was he wearin’ shoes or slippers?' "

Sanders had not before considered this. He had been too intent on other things to notice discrepancies. And though he did not want to remember it, the scene returned with too much vividness.

'Slippers,' he admitted.

'Uh-huh. So she was lying...

'Item two,' continued H. M. 'You heard her swear with touchin' simplicity and fervour that she knew nothing at all about the two candles that somebody had been burnin' in her husband's bedroom? Sure. She hadn't been walkin' about with those candles? Maybe you didn't notice her jump when I spotted 'em, though. But we won't count that. Now, on Friday night she was wearin' a big pink padded silk dressing-gown, wasn't she? Masters and I have been snoopin' round a bit, and we've had a look at that same dressing-gown. The right-hand sleeve is still all mucked up with spots of candle-grease where her hand was shaky.'

(Sanders did not question that. He did not try. For insistently there returned to his mind a memory of Mina Constable crouching in the padded chair, the padded dressing-gown drawn round her and the spots of candle-grease on the sleeve.)

'Y'see, son?' inquired H. M. meekly. Silence.

'There's also,' H. M. went on, 'the question of that big press-cutting scrap-book she says she burnt. She didn't, though. You can't burn one of those whackin' tough imitation-leather books without leaving some trace: not unless you drop it into a furnace. But there's no furnace here, not even a single wood or coal fire where it could 'a' been burned; and no trace of a burned book either. It's all lies, son. Let her sleep. If there was just some shred of proof how she did it, she might be on her way to Kingston on a charge of murder.'

'Damn and blast,' said Sanders.

'Sure,' agreed H. M.

'But everything she said and did. ... After all, what difference does it make whether Constable wore slippers instead of shoes? Or whether she burned a couple of candles and said she didn't?'

H. M. was malevolent. 'I wish I knew, son. Of all the rummy clues I ever heard of, there's a couple of the rummiest.'

'And you also maintain,' persisted Sanders, 'that everything about her - her crying, her faints, her lowered vitality, even that attempted challenge to the newspapers this evening - was all a part of a hoax and a flamboyant piece of acting?'

Masters chuckled benevolently.

'Well, sir, what do you think? You notice she was very easily persuaded not to issue her challenge, don't you?' 'I think you're wrong.'

'Free country, Doctor. Every man to his own opinion! And now, if you don't mind,' Masters bustled out with his watch, 'Sir Henry and I will have to cut along. First to Grovetop, and then on to the Black Swan to see Mr Pennik. I don't mind telling you there's an interview I'm looking forward to! When Sir Henry meets him -'

'That woman is still in danger.'

'All right, Doctor. You guard her. Good night, good night, good night!'

He opened the door and motioned H. M. to precede him. H. M., picking up his ancient top-hat and his equally ancient coat from the rack beside the door, lumbered forward two steps and stopped. He turned round.

He said:

'Look here, Masters. Just supposin' this young feller happens to be right?'

Masters almost howled at him: 'Now what do you want to go thinking things like that for? We've been all over this, sir. We know what we think, don't we ?'

'Oh, sure. Sure. We always do. Every time anybody in this world takes a toss and goes full-tilt down a butter slide, it comes from knowin' what he thinks. Well, let's hear the mournful numbers. What do we think?'

After looking round cautiously, Masters closed the door. Then he talked at Sanders.

'That Mrs Constable deliberately murdered her husband, by some trick we haven't dropped to yet. Ah, and I'll tell you something else. I haven't read any of the lady's books (no fear). But my wife has: all of 'em, and she told me a thing or two before I left home. In one of the books, about an Egyptian expedition, a whole string of people were supposed to die from a curse on the Pharaoh's tomb; and it turned out that they were really polished off by some ruddy clever use of carbon-monoxide gas. My wife couldn't remember exactly how the thing worked, but she said it sounded all right and you could do it at home, so she wondered whether it would work in case she ever wanted to polish me off.'

Sanders shrugged his shoulders.

'All right, admit that,' he said. 'And in The Double Alibi she had the victim die from a hypodermic injection of insulin. Which is a hair-raiser, because it's scientifically sound and very nearly undetectable. I remember I said something about it to her on Friday evening. But what of that? Constable didn't die from carbon monoxide or insulin. What does it prove ?'

'It proves my point,' declared Masters, tapping his finger into his palm, 'that a trick like this, whatever in blazes it is, would be straight up her street. If she ever set out to polish somebody off, that's just exactly how she'd go about it. Something as wild as wind and yet as domestic as cheese.

Something you could do in your own home with two thimbles and a tablet of soap; and no special knowledge required.'