The Sleeping Sphinx

"What’s so wrong with it?"

"My dear girl! That would be merely vindictive, don't you see? And in all the years I've known you, my dear, I've never once known you to be vindictive. You wouldn't like to start now, would you?"

"It isn't question," Holden cut in, "of being vindictive or anything else. If s a question of plain justice!"

"Ah, yes. No doubt. Do you believe Mrs. Marsh committed suicide, sir?"

"No," answered Holden.

"You don't believe it?"

"No. I think she was deliberately murdered."

The Panama hat dropped out of Dr. Shepton's big-knuckled fingers, and rolled over wabbling in the sandbox. Clearly the word "murder" had never occurred to him. He bent over, grunting, to retrieve the hat; and then straightened up again.

"You think it was murder, eh?" he ruminated. "Dear, dear, dear!" The dryness of Dr. Shepton's tone, the hint of irony, at once infuriated Holden and shook his confidence.

"Doctor, listen! May even a layman ask how some perfectly healthy person can die of cerebral hemorrhage with no contributing cause?"

"I’ll tell you what I’ll do,"- offered Dr. Shepton, smiling man to man and extending his hat. "I had—er—intended to return to Wiltshire by the first train tomorrow moming. But I'll tell you what I'm staying at a little hotel in ... where is It? Ah, yes. Welbeck Street. Welbeck Street! Why not come round there and see me tomorrow morning? Say ten o'clock."

"No!" cried Celia. Her eyes appealed to Holden, with the whole strength of her nature in that appeal. "Don't go, Don! He—he wants to see you alone. He wants to tell you things about me, when I'm not there to defend myself!"

"Easy, Celia!"

"You won't go, will you?"

"Doctor," said Holden, "I thank you for your very kind offer. I'm afraid I can't accept. Only: could you answer, here and now, the question about Margot Marsh's death?"

‘I could, sir," Dr. Shepton retorted. His eye strayed toward Celia. "But I don't propose to do so."

"Very well. Then we know where we stand. Celia, she tells me, has already written the police ..."

Dr. Shepton's stooped shoulders quivered. "She's written to the police?"

"The day before yesterday," Celia told him.

"And in any case,' Holden was desperately trying to make this interview friendly, when he could see it was reaching a dangerous pitch of tensity, "tomorrow morning I intend to go to Scotland Yard. I also have a friend at the War Office, Frank Warrender, who may be able to pull a few strings."

"Young man," quavered Dr. Shepton, with age and weariness breaking through that formality, "you don't understand what you're doing. You're in love. It's bad for the judgment "This is a tragic affair. A very tragic affair."

"I quite appreciate that, Doctor. I was very fond of Margot myself."

"Are you forcing me to tell you, in this young lady's presence, something that concerns her? Something that can only cause you pain? And that will distress her stfll more?"

Holden was taken aback. "Well! If you put it like that..."

"I force you," Celia interposed clearly.

From somewhere close at hand, yet muffled by trees and hedges, there rose up at that moment a calling and clamoring voice. It was so close, indeed, that they could also hear the noise of heavy footsteps clumping on gravel in the path outside the playground: footsteps starting, stopping uncertainly as though someone were peering around, and moving on. What the apprehensive voice kept crying was:

"Miss Celia! Miss Celial Miss Celia!"

It was Obey’s voice.

Holden would have known it anywhere. Obey, surname remotely rumored to be O'Brien, but long since lost to any trace of Irish speech; Christian name unknown, but never called anything except Obey since either of the Devereux children could speak. Obey, short of breath, her hair still done in the style of the First World War, who loved Celia and Margot as she had loved no other persons on earth.

"Yes," announced Celia, as the voice called out. "It’s Obey. Thorley's got her to such a state, unfortunately, that she's alarmed if I even go for a walk. Don't answer her," and then, as Holden was about to protest, "don't answer her, I tell you! She may not think of the playground. Dr. Shepton!"

"Well, my dear?"

"Didn't you have something to tell Don?"

"If it will stop Scotland Yard and the other powers that be," returned Dr. Shepton, wiping his sleeve across his forehead, "very well. Celia has told you, young man, about Mr. Marsh's brutality toward his wife? How this went on and on? How, on one occasion, she saw Mr. Marsh attack his wife and try to strangle her?"

Holden flung the answer back at him.

"Celia's told me that, yes! What about it?"

"Only," said Dr. Shepton, "that there is not one word of truth in the whole story."

"Miss Celia! Miss Celia! Miss Celia!" Dinning against the stillness, as Dr. Shepton's words dinned into Holden's ears, the wailing cry still rose.

Dr. Shepton held up a hand, palm outward.

"Mr. Marsh," he stated, "never did any such thing. On the contrary. I am in a position to testify that his conduct throughout the whole distressing affair was that of," the old voice shook, "what my generation would have called a perfect gentleman. Toward his wife he was kindness itself."

"Miss Celia! Miss Celia! Miss Celia!"

"Next, young man, there was the so-called attempt of Mrs. Marsh to kill herself by means of 'strychnine poisoning.' It never occurred. Nobody had any strychnine; nobody took any strychnine. I tell you that simply."

‘'Miss Celia! Miss Celia! Miss Celia!"

"For God's sake," said Holden, suddenly whirling round in the direction of Obe/s voice, "will somebody shut that woman up?" He inflated his lungs for a shout "In here, Obey! In the playground!" He whirled back to Dr. Shepton, taking a step forward and almost pitching headlong into the sandbox.

"Mrs. Marsh's complaint on the occasion referred to," continued Dr. Shepton, "was a simple illness. I attended the case. You will concede that I ought to know. The strychnine was a sheer delusion of Celia's.

"If," he added, "it had been only that!" Dr. Shepton fumbled at his watch chain; he sounded even more troubled. "If it had been only that I mightn't have taken the romancing so seriously. For it's true that once or twice there may have been . . . well, certain unavoidable misunderstandings."

"Ah!" said Holden. "Misunderstandings! So we're hedging, are we? We now admit that there may have been something to misunderstand?"

"Sir, will you allow me to finish?"

"Go on."

"Celia's delusion that Mrs. Marsh actually died from some unnamed poison, out of a bottle which (I assure you) did not exist grew out of the other fancies. It was caused by them. It's dangerous."

"To Thorley Marsh?"

"To herself. Nor, unfortunately, have you heard the worst. Has Celia told you about the night immediately after her sister's death, when she saw ghosts walking in the Long Gallery?"

Again a silence, painful to the eardrums, stretched out into hollow night.

"Well!" said Dr. Shepton. "It was probably caused by those infernal murderers' masks, which made so deep an impression on her at the Lockes'. But—has she told you?"

"No," said Holden.

Celia, with a convulsive movement turned her back.

"My dear girl!" Dr. Shepton exclaimed unhappily. "Nobody's blaming you. Don't think that You can't help yourself. That's why we want to cure you. And I," his big face wrinkled up, "I'm only an old-fashioned country GP. I'm certain this gentleman, when he gets the rage out of him, will agree with us. What do you say, Miss Obey?"

"Yes!" muttered Holden, and snapped his fingers. 'Yes! Yes! Obey!"

A few steps behind him, her red face showing grayish in this light, her eyes popping, the wheezing of her breath rising from a vast bosom, hovered Obey.

"Look at me, Obey!" Holden said. "Do you recognize me?"

"Mr. Don!" She first gulped, and then was reproachful. "As if I wouldn't know you! Besides, Mr. Thorley told me you were here. He—oh, dear!" Obey clapped her hands to her mouth. "Mr. Thorley told me I was to be sure to call you 'Sir Donald,' because he was going to do a business deal with you and we'd got to play up to you. Oh, dear, that's worse than ever! If you'll excuse me, now, sir, I really must get Miss Celia home and . . ."

"Listen, Obey." His gaze stopped her, as though she had run into a wall. "I'm not sure how much you've heard of this poisonous nonsense Dr. Shepton has been talking. But I know how you feel about Celia. I know how you've always felt. I trust you. What Dr. Shepton says isn't true, is it?"

The trees whispered; one of the swings stirred with faint spectral creaking; and Obey whimpered like a hurt animal. But she could not, physically could not, turn away from his gaze.

"Yes, Mr. Don," she said brokenly. "It's true."

CHAPTER VII

HIGH grew the grass in the fields round Caswall Moat House, at Caswall in Wiltshire, on that following evening of the eleventh of July.

It was no longer necessary, after another day of fiery sun, to stand in the shade of one of the few beech trees in the field on the south side or front of the house. But Don Holden still stood there, his back propped against the tree, a twentieth cigarette between his lips, trying to think.

Rich land, watered by underground springs, stretched away in thick grass exhaling summer drowsiness. Westward, where the trees of the carriage drive curved up from the south not quite to the main door, the sky was pale gold. Caswall, low and dun-colored, prepared for sleep.

It was not really a vast place, consisting only of narrow galleries built on two floors round and above an inner quadrangle where the cloisters lay. But, its long twinkling-windowed court of what had once been stables, bakeries, and brew houses, westward, shut off and for many years disused, added length to make it seem vast. And around everything, placid as it had lain for seven hundred years, stretched the moat.

Seven hundred years.

No stone, no arrow of war, had fallen into that moat since the forceful Lady D'Estreville, in the thirteenth century, had turned an already-old building into an abbey. For who attacks a religious house? The nuns, shuffling to orisons through semi-underground cloisters, had kept carp in the moat for fast days. But the Reformation attacked religious houses; and down the immensity of time strode William Devereux, rattling a well-filled purse, to bedeck Caswall with furniture out of Italy and pictures out of Flanders.

If there were any ghosts here...

Holden, so utterly dispirited that he had let his thoughts stray into a murky past, started as though stung at that word "ghosts." He straightened up from leaning against the tree, and flung away his cigarette.

"Stop this!" he said to himself. "Stop thinking! It won't do any good. You've just got to believe."

"Ah," whispered the devil, "but believe what?"

For in whichever direction he wrenched them his thoughts always snapped back, an elastic released, to that scene of last night: of the playground, and Obey mumbling out, "Ifs true." Of Celia, though he tried to stop her, rushing out of the place and running for home without another word. Of Obey lumbering after her. Of Dr. Shepton, mortally offended, speaking only to wish him a freezing good night before marching away.

And how he himself (as somehow the villain of the piece) had tried to get a word with Celia, only to be met at the front door of Number 1 Gloucester Gate by an injured-looking Thorley who tactfully barred his way. Even so, Thorley's first words had been those of business.

"Look, Don," Thorley had said confidentially. "Are you seriously thinking of buying Caswall?"

"What’s that?—Oh! Yes, of course."

"Then here's the point" Thorley, guarding his voice, peered into the hall behind him; the light shone on his sleek black hair. "Would you mind going down in the train like Obey and Cook? There's plenty of room in the car, of course; only Doris Locke to go with us. But if s better you don't see Celia for a little while. You've played Old Harry with her tonight"

'I’ve played Old Harry with her?"

"Yes. Speaking as a friend of yours .. ."

"A friend of mine, eh? After all those lies you rattled off tonight? 'Celia isn't at home.' 'Celia's forgotten all about you.'"

"One day, old man," said Thorley, looking at him very steadily, "you may realize it was for Celia's good and yours. However," he shrugged, "just as you like. It's your funeral."

His funeral.

Standing now under the beech tree, with evening coming on and Caswall reflected dingy yellow-brown in the waters of its moat, Holden faced an issue which was quite clear-cut. It might be maddening, it might be incomprehensible; but it was quite clear-cut

Either Thorley Marsh, whom he had once considered his closest friend, was an unctuous hypocrite who had married Margot Devereux for her money, turned on her savagely, and then, for some motive as yet not established, had either killed her or driven her to suicide.

Or, on the other hand, Celia Devereux—whom he loved; whom he would continue to love—had dreamed all these accusations out of a diseased fancy, and was an unbalanced person who might become dangerously insane.

There was no alternative. You had to take your choice.

God!

Holden banged his fist against the rough, gnarled bark of the beech tree. He fished another cigarette out of his pocket, lit it rather unsteadily, and blew out smoke while he considered.

Of course, there could be no doubt on which side he stood. He loved Celia. But reason backed him up as well. He could tell himself, calmly and with no trace of wishful thinking, that he knew Celia to be in no way abnormal and that he believed everything she said...

"Are you sure?" whispered the devil.

Well, almost sure; but that was just the difficulty in this matter. Last night, or during the thin morning hours when he had sat wide awake at the window of his hotel room, he had tried to find the factor in this affair which had kept him (normally an even-tempered person) always in a state of exasperation.

And it was this: that nobody would listen to evidence.

You said, "This case"; and they said, "What case?" If they began with the assumption of Celia's malady, then any word she spoke became suspect. Lucidly she had given a detailed account—of anger between Thorley and Margot, of a poison bottle in a cupboard, of Margot's changing a silver gown for a black velvet one in the middle of the night, of a burned diary, of the poison bottle's disappearance—and all this Dr. Shepton smiled away to nothingness.

Interpret that account, then! Explain it how you like, but try to explain it! Say it is moonshine, summer shadow, man-dragora dream; but at least, in the name of decency, give it the fairness of an investigation! He himself had heard his friend Frederick Barlow, the eminent K.C. speak of a certain sharp-witted gentleman named Gideon Fell. If only ...

At this point in his meditations, slumped back again against the tree, Holden heard someone call his name.

He looked up, and saw Miss Doris Locke.

She was standing almost to her knees in the thick grass, some distance away from him in the field, a vivid little figure against the massed trees of the carriage drive westward. Doris was smiling at him rather archly; but the smile faded.

For a moment they appraised each other. Doris, he remembered, had come down from London in the car with Celia and Thorley; she must have heard a good deal about last night's events.

Then Doris hurried toward him, swishing in the long grass. In her light blue frock, with the elaborately dressed hair golden in the gold evening light, she had the round chin of a girl but very much the round figure of a woman. She had assumed an air of brightness and alertness, a careless poise; but behind this he sensed (why was it there?) a strong nerve tensity.

"Hello, Don Dismallo," she said.

He returned her smile.

"Hello, Mrs. Pearcey," he answered.

Doris looked at him, startled, the blue eyes narrowing. Then her eyes opened wide, and she laughed.

"You mean," she exclaimed, "the night I played the part of Mrs. Pearcey in the Murder game at home? Yes. They tell me I was rather good." She glanced down over herself, not without approval. "That was last Christmas. It was the night when—" Doris stopped.

"Yes," he agreed, without the appearance of much interest, "it was the night Margot Marsh died."

"So very sad, wasn't it," murmured Doris in a perfunctory voice. "When did you get here?"

Holden studied her.

Doris Locke unquestionably knew that Celia Devereux was supposed to be suffering from some sort of mental distress; probably many others knew this as well. But that the details of Celia's accusations were known to Doris (or Sir Danvers, or Lady Locke, or Derek Hurst-Gore, for that matter) Holden very much doubted. Celia hadn't told this to anybody except Dr. Shepton and "the family," meaning Thorley and Obey and Cook; and these people were interested only in hushing it up.

Remember the old service rule: Handle with gloves until you're sure of your evidence!

"When did I get here?" he repeated. "By the six o'clock train. Thorley met me with the car."

Doris looked at the ground. "Have you—have you seen Celia today?"

"No."

"Not at all?"

"No." His burnt-down cigarette had begun to scorch his fingers; he threw it away into the hot grass, where it sent up a straight line of smoke. "Celia is resting, by doctor's orders. Thorley and I have just finished dinner alone."

"I . . . I . . ." Despite her inner emotional preoccupation, quick sympathy made Doris's Up tremble. "By the way, what do I call you?"

"Call me Don Dismallo. It's as good a name as any. Lord knows I feel like it."

Doris's sympathy increased.

"About—Celia?" she asked.

"Yes, that. And things. Just things!"

"I know," Doris nodded wisely. She stepped softly into the cleared space under the big tree. It was as though, with those few words, a deep understanding had been established between them.

"There are other people who feel like that, Don Dismallo," Doris said.

"Incidentally, Doris: on that night of the Murder game, you don't happen to remember what Margot was wearing?"

Doris stiffened. "Why do you want to know that?"

"Well, Celia"—he saw her sympathy return again—"Celia said Margot bad never looked more beautiful than on that night, in what she was wearing."

"Oh?" murmured Doris.

"So I just wondered what she was wearing. But," he gestured, that was over six months ago, so naturally you wouldn't remember. Since you had no special reason for remembering."

"I remember perfectly well," Doris told him coldly. "Mrs. Marsh was wearing some kind of silvery thing. It didn't suit her at all. I don't mean she wasn't very good looking; of course she was, for her age; I simply mean it didn't suit her."

"A silvery dress. You're sure it wasn't a black velvet one?"

"I'm positive it wasn't Positive! But..."

A cloudy memory stirred at the back of Doris's blue eyes. Holden, with a flash of instinct, was after it

"Margot’s death must have been a great shock to Thorley," he said. "And to your family, since you were all such great friends. I suppose he rang up your parents, after it happened?"

"Oh, yes." Her eyes were far away. "Early in the morning!"

"And perhaps you all went over to Caswall?"

"Yes. Straightaway. Father and mother," the pretty face darkened, "didn't want me to go. Funnily enough, Don Dismallo," she laughed a little, "that's exactly what I was thinking about! While they were talking to—to Thorley . . ."

"Yes, Doris?"

"I ran up the back stairs and peeped into That Woman's room. Just for a second, you know. And there was a black velvet dress on a chair at the foot of the bed. And gray stockings. Nylons. I noticed them, you see; they were nylons."

Bang had gone the shot, straight to the center of the target

Holden, trying to breathe freely and easily, glanced toward the yellowish-brown front of Caswall. The flap of a pigeon's wings, in a white flicker from the stable courtyard long disused except for one garage, rose distinctly across the field. There was a small splash and ripple from the moat.

Here was Celia's story—"unbalanced" Celia, damn them! —confirmed by a girl who doubtless had no idea she was confirming it, and who would be the one witness (for reasons of her own) to remember everything about Margot

"Thorley..." he began.

"What about Thorley?" Doris asked quickly.

(

He smiled. "You're rather fond of Thorley, aren't you?"

"Ye-es. I dare say I am." She spoke offhandedly, with that nineteen-year-old reluctance, combined with the rush of blood to the face, which conceals sheer adoration. It disquieted Holden and rather frightened him.

'You—you say," Doris added, "Thorley’s over there now. You've finished dinner?"

"Yes. And a very lavish dinner it was."

"Of course. It would be." Then Doris let herself go. "Thorley knows his way about, thanks. He tells me he's got the black market lined up just like that." She drew an invisible line in the air. "If there's something he wants, then nothing will stop him from getting it And I don't think there's anything he can't do, either. Even to—walking on logs."

"Even to... what?"

"If s nothing, really. But it was on the day you were talking about, the afternoon before the Murder party. You remember the trout stream that runs through our grounds?"

"I think I've seen it."

"Well, Thorley and Ronnie and I were out after the big blue trout that hangs about in the deep pool under the sycamore." (Now it was the girl speaking, rather than the poised, arch, alert young lady.) "That blue trout, you can't catch him; he's too wily; but you can have some fun with him. There was a thin log over the pool. Ronnie tried nonchalantly to walk across it, and only fell in with a splash. Thorley said, 'Come, nowl' And Thorley walked across the log, and then turned around and walked back with his eyes shut Mind you, with his eyes shut."

Holden only nodded gravely.

"I mean," said Doris, pulling herself together, "that’ s how I like a man to be!" She surveyed Holden. "You know, Don Dismallo," she said abruptly, "you're sort of," she groped for a word, "sort of sympathetic."

"Am I, Doris? Thanks."

"And I never used to think you were."

"Weill You've grown up now."

"Of course I have." Though she still held one shoulder elaborately high, as though aloof, she came closer. The blue eyes were angry. "You—you said you were down in the dumps about Celia."

"Yes. But you've helped me."

"I've helped you?"

"By George, you have!"

"Anyway," Doris disregarded this, "I told you you weren't the only one. I mean, it was too utterly absurd of my father and mother to be absolutely livid just because I chose to go to London on my own for a few days!" Doris laughed. Her whole face and expression became genuinely, subtly mature. "The things I could teach my own mother!" she said.

"I see. But..."

"But," interrupted Doris, with a short gesture, "their getting into a flat spin about a few days in town was the last straw. It was, really. And, what’s more, tonight I'm going to end it."

"End what?"

"You'll see," answered Doris, nodding her head in a meaning fashion. "There are certain secrets about certain people, and maybe dead people as well, that ought to have an airing. And they're going to get one. Tonight."

"Meaning what?"

"You'll see," Doris promised again. "I'm off now, Don Dismallo. You're nice." "Here! Doris! Stop a bit!"

But she was already running lightly through the long grass toward the house, her short skirt swinging at her knees.

There was going to be trouble, an explosion of some kind. Under that assumption of casualness Doris was in a feverish state of mind. Holden's eyes strayed toward the left. Far over there westward, hidden now by the trees of the carriage drive, lay Caswell Church of so many memories, and the churchyard sloping up into a hill; and, a mile or more beyond that hill on the road to Chippenham, the large modern house called Widestairs.

Doris Locke had stamped over here, flaming. "It was too utterly absurd of my father and mother to be absolutely livid just because I chose to go to London on my own for a few days!" And then that look as she laughed and added: "The things I could teach my own mother!"

Trouble!

Dusk was settling softly in clear, warm air. Caswall's narrow windows had lost their reflected light. The floor of the stone bridge across the moat, built there when the south front had been remodeled in the eighteenth century, showed whitish against darkening water.

Farther down, where sparrows hopped, another and smaller bridge spanned the moat to the stable yard. Holden moved slowly forward toward the house. The dingy gilt hands of the stable-yard clock, facing eastward and only to be seen when you drew near, indicated twenty minutes to nine.

"There are certain secrets about certain people that ought to be given an airing."

Confound it, why worry about Doris? After all, hadn't she given good proof that Celia had been telling the truth?

Holden's footsteps crunched on the white gravel of the drive. Beyond the bridge across the moat, thirty feet broad and faintly rippling, a double flight of stone stairs led up to an arched front door. Those stairs were necessary. Caswall's inhabited floors lay above the semi-underground rooms and cloisters, bleached museum pieces now, where the first abbess had held office over her nuns.

And, as Holden crossed the bridge and ascended the steps, the whole breath and atmosphere of the past reached out and drew him in. When he had closed the front door (which worked on a ponderous mechanism of bars and bolts always locked at nightfall), the atmosphere rose about him like water. Caswall, despite its antiquity, was not dead. It breathed; it stirred in sleep; it inspired dreams.

Dreams. Celia's dreams...

The renovated great hall, all scrubbed white in carven stone, contained a few bits of more modern furniture to relieve its chill. But several carpets only patched it; a big wine-colored sofa looked lost in it; a brass candelabrum became a mere toy. Margot and Thorley, Holden reflected, had held their wedding reception here. So had other Devereux girls, amid stringed music plucked and twanging, years before the accession of Queen Elizabeth.

Nobody here now; nobody stirring.

He turned to his right, and walked down the echoing length into the high, echoing Painted Room: green paneled except for its murals, the colors of whose figures were almost lost in the fading light.

Nobody here, either. But over there across from him, in the north-east comer, a short flight of carpeted stairs in an embrasure led up to the Long Gallery.

"Has Celia"—Dr. Shepton's voice returned to him as clearly as though the stoop-shouldered doctor, no fool, were here in the flesh—"has Celia told you about the night, immediately after her sister's death, when she saw ghosts walking in the Long Gallery?"

Celia wasn't mad! She wasn't! Celia was here now, amid the spell and the dreams of Caswall: "resting," they said. If she had beheld anything (anything, say, that crept out of these walls between the lights), it had been no delusion. Suppose he, Donald Holden, were to go over there now; and slip up the carpeted stairs to the Long Gallery; and suppose he were to see ... ?

He went, making hardly a sound on the steps.

The gallery, appearing narrow because of its great length, stretched from south to north. A single drugget of brownish carpet ran along the wooden floor to where, at the far end, another short flight of steps under an arch led up into the Blue Drawing Room. The Long Gallery was lighted, on the eastern side, by three very large oriel windows, deeply embrasured, with tall lights and diamond panes.

Modem upholstered chairs and smoking tables—as a rule in the window embrasures—were set out to give the effect of a bunging room. There were bookcases. But dominating the Long Gallery, vivid and powerful, loomed the line of portraits which stretched along the western wall. The light was still clear, though fading; nothing seemed to move or stir.

What Holden did hear, what stopped him dead in his tracks, was a real voice: a young voice, crying out in a tone of such utter and abject misery that Holden's nerves shrank from it. The owner of the voice imagined himself alone; he was not really speaking loudly, but the acoustics of the Long Gallery carried it

"God, please help me!" the voice said, in the form of a prayer. "God, please help me! God, please help me!"

It was a little naive, and utterly sincere. A lanky, leggy young man in sports clothes, who had been sitting in a chair just outside the embrasure of the middle window, bent forward and pressed his hands over his eyes.

CHAPTER VIII

Holden very softly crept back down the stairs again. When anybody feels as deeply as that, whatever the cause, you cannot let him know you have overheard him. So Holden waited for long seconds, in the Painted Room, before making loud shuffling noises, coughing, and going up the steps again with a heavy and obvious tread. He strolled slowly along the gallery: disturbingly, the eyes of the portraits seemed fixed steadily on him as he passed.

The lanky and leggy young man, who might have been between nineteen and twenty, was now sitting sprawled back in his armchair, one hand shading his eyes, staring out at the fields through the oriel window.

"Hello," said Holden, and stopped beside him.

"Oh!—Hello, sir."

Instinctively, as a schoolboy rises when a master enters the room, the young man had started to get to his feet; the newcomer grinned and waved him back.

"My name's Holden," he explained. "You're Ronald Merrick, aren't you?"

The young man stared at him. His face, ravaged by anguish only a few moments before, had smoothed itself out

"That’s right. How did you know . . . ?"

"Oh, I rather thought you were. Cigarette?"

"Th-thanks."

Holden saw instantly, as a light switch is clicked on, that he had made an ally. For this was the sort of young man who instinctively, out of a sixth sense, recognizes that congenial (and rare) type of schoolmaster whom he knows, whom he really respects, and in whom he sometimes confides as he will confide in no other person on this earth.

"Look, sir," pursued young Merrick, as he hastily scrabbled to light a match for their cigarettes. "Weren't you at Lupton before the war?"

"Yes."

"I thought I'd heard Tom Clavering speak about you! And: wait a minutel Didn't Celia tell Doris"—his eyes widened— "weren't you in MI5? Intelligence?"

"That’s right."

Ronald Merrick's dark-haired, rather Byronic good looks were set in a kind of glaze. Holden studied him as the young man sat there, half raised up out of his chair, in an old sports coat patched with leather at the elbows. He had the artist's face, the artist’s hands, the artist's discontent; but his jaw was strong, and Holden liked the set of his shoulders.

"You mean," young Merrick was so impressed as to be almost hypnotized, "you mess about in disguise? And get dropped out of planes in a parachute?"

"That sometimes had to be done, yes."

68

"Crikey!" breathed Ronald Merrick, and. his figure grew tense. He was obviously contrasting, in his mind, the wretched' ness of his own lot with what he conceived to be the bliss of messing about in disguise and foiling the Gestapo according to film versions of how this is done.

"Sir," he burst out hopelessly, and whacked his fist down on the arm of the chair, "why is life so... so...."

"Bloody?" suggested Holden.

The other looked a trifle startled. "Well—yes."

"Because it often is, Ronnie. I've been thinking exactly the same thing."

"You?"

"Yes. It depends on the nature of the trouble."

"Look, sir." Ronnie stared very hard at the cigarette between his clasped fingers. He cleared his throat "Do you know Doris Locke?"

"I've known her for a long time."

"And of course you know," his face darkened, "Mr. Marsh?"

"Yes."

"They're here now. In the Blue Drawing Room. I opened the door, I didn't mean to open the door, you understand; I just did. And they were..."

He stopped. Grinding out his cigarette on the glass top of the table, he jumped up in a fever of anguish and began to pace outside the embrasure. It never occurred to him to wonder whether or not Holden might understand what he was talking about; he simply assumed, like a sixth former in front of a master, that the latter would naturally be acquainted with any subject he chose to mention.

"You see, sir, I can't understand it!"

"Understand what?"

"It wouldn't be so bad," declared Ronnie, running his hands through his hair, "if I could only understand what Doris sees in him. I mean, a man old enough to be her father! See what I mean?"

"You were referring to Doris and—and Mr. Marsh?"

"Yes, of course. Mind you," added Ronnie, suddenly assuming a very lofty and disdainful attitude with his hand on the back of a chair, "I think I'm tolerably sophisticated myself. Broadminded, and all that these things happen. They're a part of nature, and we can't help 'em. If," he added anxiously, "you follow what I mean?"

"Yes. I think I follow you."

"But the point is, there ought to be decency in it!" Ronnie hesitated. "You take Mrs. Marsh; for instance. The one that died."

Holden's pulses gave a violent jump and throb, though he only continued to study the tip of his cigarette. "What about Mrs. Marsh?"

"Well she was all right. When she had an affair (mind; I'm not saying she did), then she chose somebody as old as herself: yes, and I should think a good deal older! But"—he dismissed Margot with a wave of the hand—"but Doris is different, don't you see?"

"Doris is on a different plane. Spiritually, and everything else, from all these other people. Naturally, I know there's never been anything of what you could call wrong between her and Marsh." This idea, to Ronnie, was quite plainly inconceivable. The mere thought of it so revolted him that he shied away from it.

"It's only," he argued, "a sort of adolescent fad. It always happens in books. The only trouble is," his voice rose, "what does Doris see in him? It isn't as if he were some dashing kind of bloke that women would fall for. I—I met Doris in London last night Took her dancing. I asked her if I could come down to Widestairs today. She said yes; only I couldn't go with her, because she'd be in the car," his face wrinkled up, "with Mr. Marsh. Even when I got to Widestairs, she was hiding from me. I came over here, hoping to find her..."

And again he found her.

At that moment, as Ronnie Merrick's voice trailed away, three persons appeared in the Long Gallery.

From the south end, up the little flight of carpeted stairs from the Painted Room, appeared Sir Danvers Locke. From the north end, down the little flight of stairs from the Blue Drawing Room, came Doris Locke and Thorley Marsh.

All three stopped and stood motionless.

The Long Gallery, with those curiously portentous and somehow menacing figures at each end, gave back no sound of footfall. Through three great windows, diamond panes of clear glass, purplish-tinged dusk touched the line of portraits hanging against the opposite wall. It touched a glint of gilt or ebony in portrait frame, but it softened the richer, more somber colors of the portraits themselves.

Sir Danvers Locke moved first.

They heard his footsteps creak and crack, slowly, down that gallery with its long strip of brownish carpet. Doris and Thorley advanced to meet him. They met in the middle, just by the embrasure of the oriel window where Holden and Ronnie Merrick were standing. Yet Holden had the feeling that he and Ronnie were forgotten, unnoticed, in that meeting of eyes.

Locke, in his early fifties, remained lean and fastidious looking even when he wore country plus fours. He carried a cap in one hand and an ash stick in the other. The iron-gray hair, the high intellectual forehead, the thick dark eyebrows, the prominent cheekbones and rather beaked nose, even Locke's mouth which should have worn its usual serene smile: these features were without expression, polite and waiting.

It was Doris, flushed and bright eyed, who broke the silence.

"Tell him, Thorley!" she cried. Thorley smiled, a little nervously. "Tell him,Thorley!"

You could see Thorley, under the line of watching portraits, adjusting his face as clearly as a man adjusts a necktie.

"Locke old man," he said in a low, hearty, sincere voice, "I hope you're going to congratulate me. Doris and I have decided to get married."

And nothing happened, during a long silence. Locke did not even nod or move. Thorley, who had started forward with his hand outstretched, stopped uncertainly. Thorley's eye fell on Ronnie Merrick, and his expression grew as black as thunder; but Thorley spoke quite pleasantly.

"I think we can excuse you, young man," he said.

"Yes," said Ronnie, abruptly coming to life like a young man who has been hypnotized. "Of course. Sorry to have intruded. Congratulations."

And he marched out of the gallery: long-legged, utterly disdainful, but bumping into a little chair before he reached the stairs to the Painted Room.

"Ronnie!" Doris cried out uncertainly, with a ring of contrition in her voice. "Wait! I didn't mean to be so . . . !"

"He's all right," Thorley told her reassuringly, and patted her arm. "Let him go. But your father..."

Doris's father, at the moment, had caught sight of Holden. Locke's face lighted up with the old smile, of virile charm, which made him seem a dozen years younger. Putting down cap and walking stick on the table, he grasped the wanderer's hand.

"My dear Holden," he exclaimed, "I'm delighted to see you back again! We're all delighted to hear your 'death' was only (what shall I say?) a ruse de guerre. No"—as Holden made a strong, embarrassed attempt to follow Ronnie—"no, don't go. I think you ought to remain. Tell me, my dear fellow: how was Italy? And did you get into Spain?" "Father!" cried Doris.

"Yes, my dear?" Locke dropped Holden's hand and turned around.

"Aren't you," gasped Doris, with her high color making the blue eyes seem paler, and shivering all over, "aren't you at least going to pay at-attention to me? I've been in love with Thorley for months and months and months. We're going to get married just as soon as ..."

"As soon as," remarked Locke, politely running his eye over Thorley's clothes, "as Mr. Marsh gets rid of that deep mourning he is now wearing?"

Silence.

It was a deadly thrust, however thin and lightly held seemed the rapier. Locke rolled an upholstered chair around so that its back was to the window, and sat down. Behind him lay the darkening moat, and the dim green fields dotted with a few beech trees. Thorley, deeply hurt and really shocked, stared back at him.

"I thought," Thorley burst out, "you were a friend of mine!"

"So I am," assented Locke, and inclined his head.

"I love her," said Thorley. It was impossible to doubt, apparently, his honesty or his deep feeling. Doris, still clutching at Thorley's sleeve, looked up at him with eyes of sheer adoration. Holden, in spite of himself, could not help feeling oddly touched.

"I love her," Thorley repeated, with real dignity. "Is there any reason, financial or—or social, why we shouldn't marry?"

"None whatever."

"Well, then!"

Locke crossed his knees comfortably.

"Let's put aside," he suggested, "certain considerations which (I suppose) don't matter. Young Merrick, who, with your exquisite courtesy, has just been kicked out of here..."

"I know. I'm sorry." Thorley passed a hand across his forehead. "But the damn little nuisance—!"

"The damn little nuisance, as you call him, is the son of my oldest friend, Lord Seagrave. He is also, I am inclined to believe, something of a genius."

Thorley, baffled, appealed to the ceiling.

"An artist!" he said.

"I beg your pardon," corrected Locke. "He is a painter. Whether or not he is an artist remains to be seen. There are very few good painters nowadays. They are afraid of color, and they are afraid of detail. Ronald is not He is now studying under Dufresnes, the only teacher in Europe," Locke lifted long fingers and snapped them, "worth that; and we shall see. Still! This is not important."

"I know that" retorted Thorley. "And I'm glad (if you'll excuse my saying so, old man) you have the sense to see it too. Then what’s the devil's so wrong if Doris and I get married?"

"You see no objection?"

"No!"

"Perhaps not" said Locke. "But before my daughter becomes your second wife, I should prefer to be sure how your first wife died."

Around the window-embrasure behind Locke's chair ran a window seat of padded red velvet Holden, dropping his long-dead cigarette on the floor, had crept into it All this time Holden had been experiencing the extraordinary sensation that one of the portraits—a Devereux lady of the seventeenth century, with wired ringlets—was looking at him fixedly. So strong was the illusion that he had to wrench his gaze away, even to look at Thorley, when Locke's quiet remark exploded.

Doris, who evidently had heard nothing of the undercurrents, dropped her hand from Thorley's arm and was staring at her father in bewilderment. Thorley's voice grew thick.

"You've been talking to Celia!" he said. "I beg your pardon?" said Locke.

"You've been talking to Celia," Thorley almost shouted. "The little devil's as mad as a coot and..." "Easy, Thorley!" said Holden, and got to his feet "I assure you," interposed Locke, turning round his dark arched brows and prominent cheekbones for a brief glance at Holden, "I haven't been talking to Celia. I haven't even seen her. I understand the poor girl has been," he hesitated, "ill."

"Her illness," Holden said bitterly, "consisting in the statement that Thorley had treated Margot brutally, and probably driven her to suicide."

But Holden stopped there. He couldn't literally and physically couldn't, pour out the whole grisly story. He didn't quite know why. But he couldn't He left it there, in the air, while Locke stared around and Doris uttered a gasp.. . "Indeed!" was Locke's only comment

"That's a he!" said Thorley.

"Indeed?" Locke inquired politely.

"I tell you, it's a lie," Thorley repeated, with white earnestness. "I think I must be the most misunderstood man on earth. But," he moistened his lips, "about Margot's death. If you haven't been talking to Celia, who have you been talking to?"

"Nobody," answered Locke calmly.

"But nobody's said anything about it!"

"Of course not. Certainly, at least, not in your hearing. But—my dear Marsh!"

"Well?"

"Your wife, in perfect health, dines at my house and goes home with you, and in less than twelve hours she is dead. I say no more. But if you imagine that nobody hereabouts has wondered at it, or has even thought about it, you've been living in a fool's paradise."

"I see," muttered Thorley. And he turned his head away.

But it was different with Doris.

After that one gasp, there had flitted across Doris's face such a wild, contemptuous, half-pitying look that she became incoherent. Her blue eyes, half tearful with hero worship, turned toward Thorley as toward a martyred champion fighting in a ring of enemies. Thorley gave her a brave smile and a half-humorous shrug of the shoulders, to imply that they were fighting together.

And so they were. Tough little Doris, with a mutinous underlip, braced herself as she saw her father bend forward to speak.

"Doris?"

"Yes, father?"

"Understand me, my dear. I don't say there's anything at all in these rumors against our friend Marsh."

"No, father?" (Her frantic lips half-breathed the words, "How nice!")

"I daresay there isn't, and I hope there isn't But it concerns your welfare. That's the only reason why I mention it at all."

"So now," Doris cried out suddenly, "you're pleading with me."

"I shouldn't exactly call it pleading, my dear."

"Shouldn't you? I should." Her voice rose to a small scream. "If s all very well for you to sit in the corner, like Voltaire or Anatole France or somebody: that is, when we're in public and not at home. But you see now I'm determined to marry Thorley (yes, and I can get married at nineteen; don't think I can't) and now you're pleading with me!"

"That was another matter, my dear, which I hadn't mentioned. After all, there is a considerable difference in your ages."

"Really?" said Doris, very pleased with herself. "Oh, I don't think that'll make much difference." "How can you be sure of that?"

"Weill" She lifted her shoulders and laughed. "I suppose by such a long time of what the lawyers call 'intimacy.'"

"Doris!" exclaimed Thorley, genuinely shocked that this should be mentioned in public. Thorley made fussed gestures which implored the others to be calm.

Danvers Locke was as white as a ghost.

"Intimacy." He managed to swallow the word.

"That's right, father. I'll use a cruder term if you like."

Locke's arms were extended along the arms of the chair, his fingers gently tapping.

"And how long has this 'intimacy' been going on? Was it —was it before Mrs. Marsh's death?"

"Oh, father dear! Ages before."

"So that," Locke spoke with an effort, "if anyone got the notion that for your sake (your sake!) Mr. Thorley Marsh might have hastened his wife's departure... ?"

"Locke, for God's sake!" said Thorley.

"Oh, why not be frank about it?" Doris demanded. She turned to Thorley with her eyes brimming over. "Darling," she said, "are you ashamed of loving me? I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud. But I want them to understand you. I want them to see how fine and brave and noble you are."

"Yes, Thorley," observed Holden, not without dryness. "You might begin telling us how fine and brave and noble you are."

"Just one moment, please," said Doris, darting in immediately to defend her now-groggy champion. "If there's going to be any ghastly rot talked about how people behaved, let me say something. I—I shouldn't have said it else."

Here Doris swallowed hard.

"You—you always want to attack Thorley," she went on.

"And, of course, he's too contemptuous to say anything, or you'd hear a lot. Thorley’s been my lover. But who was Margot Marsh's lover?"

Locke started to get up from his chair, but sat down again. It was Holden who walked across to Doris.

"Margot," he asked, "had a lover?"

"Yes!" sniffed Doris.

"Who was he?"

"I don't know." Doris threw out her hands. "Thorley didn't know himself."

Doris's flares of rage were never of long duration. This one, under her father's cold and steady eye, began to flicker and falter. She caught at Thorley’s arm for support. Yet she fought back.

"That Woman," she gave Margot the capital letters of sheer hatred, "That Woman was so intolerably prudish—oh, dear me, yes!—and she'd never done anything like that before —oh, dear, no!—that she was terribly, terribly secret about it. You'd have thought it was an awful sin or something. She was wild about him toward the end, though, whoever he was. Absolutely wild. You could see the signs. And . . ."

"Doris," interrupted her father. Still he did not speak loudly, but there was something in his voice which made her falter still more.

"Doris," continued Locke, "despite your vast experience in these matters, and your understanding of our poor human problems, has it ever once entered that scatterbrain of yours" —suddenly he whacked the arm of the chair—"that Mrs. Marsh was probably poisoned?"

"Has it, my dear?"

"I don't know," flamed Doris, "and I don't care. All I mean is: you're not going to look so shocked at Thorley for doing what That Woman did too, after she'd already made his life so unhappy about other things. And you're not going to say Thorley was mean and brutal and 'hastened her departure.' "

"No, Doris," Holden said gently. "But then we're not going to say Celia is mad."

"Celia's nice, Don Dismallo," said Doris, lifting a flushed face. "But she's crazy. Thorley told me. Crazy, crazy, crazyl"

And they looked at each other.

"Gentlemen," Locke said formally, after a long pause, "it would be an understatement to say that we are in the middle of an abominable mess."

He rose to his feet.

It just then occurred to Holden that here in the Long Gallery they were directly underneath the suite of rooms where the crime (if you could call it that) had been committed. Up there, if you glanced southward, would be the white-and-gold sitting room where Margot had been taken ill, and the rose bedroom where she had died.

Perhaps the same thought occurred to Locke, for he lifted his eyes briefly before clasping his hands together with close, controlled emotion.

"Somehow," Locke continued, "we got into this. Somehow we must get out of it. The life of every single person connected with this affair has become involved in the web. It's no abstract problem. It's a violent personal issue. Yet it's a web we can't see; can't understand; can only feel. We're not even sure what the problem is. Until we solve that problem, we shall touch frantic states of mind and we shall not be able to sleep at night. But I can't solve the problem. Apparently you can't. In the name of heaven, who can solve it?"

It was Obey's voice which startled them then, 006/8 voice calling the announcement of someone's arrival from the steps to the Painted Room. What Obey bawled was:

"Dr. Gideon Fell."

CHAPTER IX

"Aha!" said Dr. Fell.

How a figure of such vast dimensions managed even to squeeze through the arch, let alone navigate the steps, was something of a mystery. But Dr. Fell managed it

Down he came rolling majestically, an enormous shape with a box-pleated cape round his shoulders, supporting himself on two canes. His shovel hat was clutched under a hand which held one of the canes. His shaggy mop of gray-streaked hair framed a beaming red face with three chins and a very small nose, on which was perched a pair of eyeglasses with a broad black ribbon. A bandit's moustache, uncombed for several days, curved round his mouth. And he beamed on them like a walking furnace.

Dr. Fell's dignity, it is true, was a little impaired by the fact that the ridges of his waistcoat were spattered with cigar ash, and in an upper waistcoat pocket was stuck a long folded envelope carefully inscribed with the words Don't forget this.

But the whole gallery shook to his tread. You might have imagined that the portraits, in which the last light picked out the red of an officer's uniform or the white of a wig, rattled in their frames as he advanced along the narrow strip of carpet.

Dr. Fell, after a vague glance at those portraits, seemed in danger of walking straight into them in order to examine them properly. But he remembered his purpose. Approaching the group by the middle window, he cleared his throat with a long challenging sound like a war cry.

"Mr. Thorley Marsh?"

Thorley, white-faced but stolidly himself again, nodded and stared. "Sir Danvers Locke?" Locke smiled and inclined his head. "Er—Miss Doris Locke?"

Doris, who was furtively wiping her eyes, uttered a kind of squeak at this apparition towering over her.

"Aha!" said Dr. Fell, pleased to have got that straight He wheeled round toward Holden. Whereupon, inexplicably, he began to laugh.

It started as a kind of chuckle deep in his stomach, and then spread upward like a minor earthquake. It made cigar ash rise in clouds from the ridges of his waistcoat, and blew wide the broad ribbon of his eyeglasses. It chortled and roared and thundered, turning Dr. Fell's face scarlet, bringing moisture to his eyes, and, with an outward whoop of the stomach, sending his eyeglasses flying. Its effect was rather like one of those laughing gramophone records: in which, if you are not careful, you will join without knowing why.

"Would you mind telling me," asked Holden, who like Doris and her father had been about to join in, "why I look as funny as all that?"

Dr. Fell stopped dead.

An expression of deep concern overspread his face as he got his breath back.

"Sir," he wheezed, in a voice of real distress, "I beg your pardon! I do really beg your pardon!"

It poured with a contrition out of all proportion to the offense. But he meant it. Everything about him was huger than life, including emotions. Putting down his shovel hat and one walking stick on the table beside Locke's, he groped down the ribbon of the eyeglasses and stuck them awry on his nose.

"You will—er—accept my apologies?" he demanded anxiously. "It was only, sir, that you unconsciously allowed me to accomplish something which (archons of Athens!) I had never believed possible. You see..."

"Look here,'' said Thorley. "What is all this?"

Dr. Fell slowly wheeled round again on one cane.

"Oh, ah! Yes! Sir, you must allow me to explain this unwarranted intrusion."

"No, no, glad to have you!" Thorley assured him, with a shade of Thorley's old hearty smile.

"You see," explained Dr. Fell, with his vague wandering round the gallery, "this is not the first time I have visited Caswall. At one time I had the honor to be a friend of the late Mrs. Andrew Devereux. The lady whom you called, I believe, Mammy Two."

"Mammy Two, eh?" murmured Thorley.

Through Holden's mind flashed certain cryptic words of Celia's on the night before. I don't see how I can back out now. That one man would have been safe enough, the old friend of Mammy Two. But—Could "that one man" refer to Dr. Fell? He had no time to consider this. Dr. Fell was speaking to him.

Dr. Fell, after diving into the pocket of his coat under the big box-pleated cape, had produced a sheet torn from a small notebook and was holding it out to him.

"Before we—harrumph—continue," wheezed Dr. Fell, with an odd flash out of those absent-looking eyes, "will you be good enough to glance over this and tell me whether its contents are correct?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sir," said Dr. Fell rather testily, and shook the paper in the air, "will you please read this?"

Holden took the paper. It was now so dusky that little of expression could be discerned, but there had been a definite warning in Dr. Fell's eyes. Kneeling sideways on the window seat, Holden held the paper close to the glass to read it. In the night stillness around Caswall he could hear the ripple of the moat

Then the penciled words leaped out at him.

I cannot speak in front of anyone else. As soon as it is fully dark, will you be a witness when I unlock the vault in the churchyard, to see whether ghosts have really walked there? Say yes or no, and return this paper to me.

Twice Holden read it without lifting his eyes. When he did look up, after a glimpse of the dun-colored side of Caswall and a terra-cotta drainpipe beside the window, no muscle in his face moved. He handed the paper back to Dr. Fell.

"Yes," he assented "Thaf s perfectly correct."

Sir Danvers Locke spoke suavely; "You were saying, Dr. Fell?"

"I was saying," returned Dr. Fell, "that my previous visits to this house, except one, have been pleasant." He swayed back and forth a little, partly supporting his weight with both hands on the cane. "This visit, I regret to tell you, is official."

"Official," said Thorley. "Representing whom?"

"Representing Superintendent Madden of the Wiltshire County Constabulary. On instructions from the Metropolitan C. I. D. It refers, as you have probably guessed, to the death of Mrs. Marsh."

"I knew it!" Thorley whispered.

Quickly, with a cool and curt nod, Thorley strode to the north end of the gallery, where he touched three electric switches. It bathed the gallery with a soft glow of ceiling lamps, and of red-shaded table lamps in the window alcoves. Thorley returned to find Dr. Fell teetering back and forth on the crutch-handled stick, glowering down at his clasped hands.

Dr. Fell scowled still more.

"The matter was—harrumph—delicate," he said, without raising his head. "Hadley thought it might be less embarrassing if I, the old duffer, looked into it first In case, you see, it proved to be a mare's nest." "Ah!" said Thorley. "So you've found it’s a mare's nest" "No," answered Dr. Fell, with rounded and ominous distinctness.

"All right. Let's have it. What's the betting?"

"In my humble opinion, it was murder." Dr. Fell looked up. "Mrs. Marsh was poisoned with a toxic agent which I think I can name, and almost certainly by one of the other seven persons who were present at the Murder party on the night of December twenty-third.—One moment!"

He spoke sharply, though none of that rigid group had ventured to reply.

"Before you make any comment will you listen to my proposition?"

"Proposition?" Thorley said quickly. "You mean: it might be hushed up?"

Dr. Fell did not appear to hear this.

Becoming aware that something was sticking him under the chin—it was the long folded envelope inscribed Don't forget this and thrust into his upper waistcoat pocket for just that purpose—he drew it out and weighed it in his hand.

"I have here," he went on "a very long letter, addressed vaguely to Scotland Yard, giving a full account of the affair. I am also in a position to know, through circumstances I needn't go into now, perhaps more about it than most of you know yourselves.

"When I entered this room, sir," Dr. Fell opened his eyes at Locke, "I heard you calling on heaven for a solution to your problem. If s really not as bad as that, you know. That's my proposition. Answer my questions truthfully, and I'll solve your problem."

There was a long pause.

"Now?" asked Sir Danvers Locke.

"Perhaps sooner than you think. I can at least settle the dispute between Miss Celia Devereux and Mr. Thorley Marsh."

Again Holden's heart began to beat heavily, a feeling probably shared by everyone else.

"Are you," Locke hesitated, "are you sure you can?"

"Am I sure?" suddenly thundered Dr. Fell, rolling back his head and firing up with a sizzling kind of noise as though water had been sprinkled on the furnace. "Archons of Athens, the man asks me if I'm sure!"

"I only meant..."

"Is a judge ever sure? Is a jury ever sure? Is the recording angel himself, with the vast books of all eternity, ever sure? No; of course I'm not sure!" Dr. Fell ended this oratorical flourish, rather apologetically, by scratching his nose with the envelope. "But I have—harrumph—a certain Christian confidence."

And he wheeled round majestically, and lumbered over to sit down facing them on the window seat, beyond the - glass-topped table with the red-shaded lamp. "Who," asked Thorley, "wrote that letter?" "This? Miss Celia Devereux."

A shudder went through Doris Locke at the mention of Celia's name, as though Doris had been touched by some well-meaning leper. "Thorley, I never realized the awfulness you've had to put up with!"

"Never mind, my dear," Thorley assured her, and smiled and patted her hand. "I’ll get through."

"Thorley! As if I ever doubted that! But Celia! Even if she can't help herself!" Doris's voice altered. "Oughtn't Celia to be here?"

"I entirely agree she should," Holden said grimly. "If you'll excuse me, I'll just go up to her room and bring her down."

Thorley's glossy head swung round. "I wouldn't do that, old boy," he advised. "Celia's resting. I've given orders she's not to be disturbed."

"I'm a guest in this house, Thorley. But when you take it on yourself to give an 'order' like that..."

Thorley's eyebrows went up. "If you must hear the real reason, old boy—"

"Well?"

"Celia doesn't want to see you. Don't believe me! Ask Obey."

"That, sir," intoned Dr. Fell, looking at Holden, "is perfectly true. I have just come from a conversation with Miss Devereux. She absolutely refuses to see you. She has locked the door of her room."

A physical sickness touched Holden deep down inside him. When he thought of Celia at this time last night, under the street lamp, Celia in his arms, Celia speaking to him, all the scenes which returned in such vividness, it seemed impossible. All the eyes here were looking at him now: looking at him and (yes, worse!) pitying him.

Then, for a brief flash, he caught Dr. Fell's expression. That expression said: "You must trust me. You roust trust me, by thunder!" as clearly as though Dr. Fell had spoken aloud.

And he remembered the penciled words: I cannot speak in front of anyone else. As soon as it is fully dark, will you be a witness when I unlock the vault in the churchyard, to see whether ghosts have really walked there? It brought back the nightmare. But it showed that he and Dr. Fell shared, or were about to share, a secret That made them allies. That meant Dr. Fell must be on his side; and therefore on Celia's.

Meanwhile, Locke was speaking.

"Your question, Dr. Fell?"

"Oh, ah! As a person of extreme delicacy," said Dr. Fell, yanking the table closer to him and thereby spilling off all the hats and sticks; "as a person of extreme delicacy, he insisted, yanking the table still closer and nearly smashing the table lamp as it fell off, '1 wish to approach this matter with the greatest delicacy."

"Of course," agreed Locke, gravely picking up the lamp and putting it back on the table.

"Er—thank 'ee," said Dr. Fell. They had all taken chairs facing him around that table, Thorley sitting on the arm of Doris's chair.

A cold, still apprehension held the group. Dr. Fell dropped the long envelope on the table. With his elbows on the table, and his fingers at his temples, he shut up his eyes tightly.

"I want you," he continued, "to think back to the Murder game on the night of December twenty-third."

"Why particularly," asked Locke, "the game?"

"Sir, will you allow me to do the questioning?''

"Pardon me. Yes?"

"I want you especially, Sir Danvers, to picture that rather evil scene. Your guests and your family wearing the masks of famous murderers. Yourself in the green mask of an executioner. The bowl of lighted spirits burning blue. Those faces moving and dodging about in the dark."

For a moment, now, there was no sound except Dr. Fell's heavy wheezy breathing.

"You yourself, I believe, gave out the masks to the various people?"

"Naturally."

"It was the first time you had exhibited that particular collection?" "Yes."

"When you gave out the masks," said Dr. Fell, without opening his eyes, "did you exercise any particular choice? Did you try to make the mask, however remotely, fit the character of the person to whom you gave it?"

As at a lightening of tension, a smile appeared under Locke's large nose. He sat up straighter in the chair. The light of the table lamps shone smoothly on his iron-gray hair and accentuated the hollows under his cheekbones.

"Great Scott, no!" he said in tones of amused outrage. "On the contrary! That's what I want to emphasize. Shall I give an example?"

"If you please."

'To Mrs. Thorley Marsh, for instance," Locke smiled, yet a cold little stir ran through that group as Margot's ghost entered it, "to Mrs. Marsh I gave the mask of old Mrs. Dyer, the Reading baby farmer of infamous memory. She wouldn't have it. She insisted on being Edith Thompson: because, I suppose, Mrs. Thompson was a remarkably good-looking woman."

"Oh, ah?" murmured Dr. Fell. He opened his eyes, for a curious look at the other, before closing them again.

"My wife," continued Locke, "played Kate Webster, a huge virago of an Irishwoman. As for little Doris ..." Locke waved his hand. "You understand now?"

"I understand. But how were you sure these people could play their parts, if you made the choices at random?"

"It wasn't exactly at random. Having kept the collection of masks in reserve for a suitable occasion—"

"So!" grunted Dr. Fell.

"—and having a large crime library at Widestairs, I had already made privately certain that all our friends (except poor Celia, who loathes crime) were well read in their parts. There was, of course, a stranger. Mr. Hurst-Gore."

"Ah, yes," said Dr. Fell. "Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore."

"Fortunately, however, Mr. Hurst-Gore could enter into the spirit of it. He made an admirable Smith, of brides-in-the-bath fame."

Dr. Fell's eyes were wide open again, in a blank and rather creepy stare which to Doris Locke, who for some reason had stood in awe of this huge apparition ever since his entrance, seemed terrifying. Doris's own eyes were wide and innocent now, like a small girl's. Her hand crept up to find Thorley's as he sat on the arm of the chair.

"Now we come," said Dr. Fell, "to Mrs. Marsh's behavior on that night Sir Danvers, how should you describe her behavior?"

Locke hesitated. "I—er—don't quite follow the question."

"Her state of mind, sir! Before she went home from the mock murder to the real murder. Eh?"

"In terms of the old-fashioned theater," answered Locke thoughtfully, "I should say Mrs. Marsh behaved like a tragedy queen."

"Aha! But did she look as though, in the words of one witness, she had 'come to a decision about something?'"

"Yes! Now you mention it: yes."

"Do you agree with that Mr. Marsh?"

"Confound it!" complained Thorley. He had reached down to touch Doris's hair, but he drew back as though conscious of an impropriety. "Margot was always like that! I told Don Holden so last night Overhearty!"

"Overexcited about that man," muttered Doris.

Dr. Fell's eyes flashed open. "I beg your pardon?"

"I didn't say anythingl" breathed Doris, jumping violently. "Really and truly I didn't!"

"Harrumph. Well." (It was impossible, from that vast pink face with the lopsided eyeglasses, to tell whether Dr. Fell had heard.) "But can you confirm these versions of Mrs. Marsh's behavior, Miss Locke?"

"I'm afraid," said Doris, lifting one shoulder, "I can't help you there. I wasn't interested. I scarcely noticed the woman all evening."

(Be careful, you little fool! thought Holden. Be careful!) Of course," added Doris instantly, before Dr. Fell could speak, "I did 'murder' her in that game. But it was simply because she was the person handiest. You couldn't help spotting that silver gown in the dark."

Holden intervened just as quickly.

"That's it, Doris!" he said. "It was a silver dress, wasn't it? You do remember that? Naturally! As a woman would!"

"Ye-esl" Doris seemed relieved. "Naturally!"

Dr. Fell looked at Thorley. "Do you agree about the dress, Mr. Marsh?'

"I suppose so," Thorley said half-humorously. "I never notice what a woman is wearing. Dr. Fell; and I'D bet a fiver you don't either. You can tell whether it becomes 'em, or whether it doesn't; in either case you can't think why, so you let it go at that But—"

"But?"

"Well! I do seem in a kind of a way to remember that silver thing without shoulders, because it was so conspicuous. Margot—Margot looked worse in that death mask of Mrs. Thompson than she looked after she was dead."

And a shiver went through his bulky body.

"I see," said Dr. Fell. "Now your own party, as I understand it—yourself, Mrs. Marsh, Miss Devereux, and Mr. Hurst-Gore—left Widestairs at about eleven o'clock?"

"Yes!"

"At that time your wife still seemed in excellent health?"

"Yes. Full of beans."

"Dr. Fell!" interposed Locke very softly.

"Hey? What's that?"

"At risk of being rebuked again," said Locke, with his finger tips together, "I am a little disturbed by those words 'still seemed.' Are you implying that this poison, whatever it was, might have been administered in my house?"

"That," admitted Dr. Fell, "is a possibility we must consider. And yet"—there was a faint roar under his voice, and he puffed out his cheeks and let his fists fall on the table— "no, no, no! In that case, the effect of the poison in question must have come on at a far earlier time." "Ah!" said Locke serenely.

"But it suggests another point Did Mrs. Marsh by any chance come over to your house that same afternoon? Before the Murder game?"

A faintly startled expression came into Locke's eyes; then it was gone.

"Yes! As a matter of fact, she did."

"Oh, ah? For what purpose?"

"Presumably," smiled Locke, "to say hello. They'd just driven down from London, you know. Ah, no! One moment I remember now. She said she wanted to see her husband." He seemed puzzled; troubled. 'Yes. Her husband."

"Did she see him?"

"No. Our friend Marsh was out at the trout stream with Doris, where I believe he performed prodigies by walking across a log with his eyes shut." Locke's beautifully modulated voice gave an (somewhat ironic?) account of the incident "Mrs. Marsh, I remember, asked my wife and myself to send him home soon; she said she wished to speak to him urgently."

For a long moment Dr. Fell stared at Locke. Then his shaggy head swung round.

"And this (harrum!) this urgent message. What was it, Mr. Marsh?"

"It wasn't anything!" protested Thorley. "I keep telling you, over and over, Margot was like that! She—"

"Sir," interrupted Dr. Fell, "was it to ask you for a divorce?"

Long pause.

(Divorce? Holden was thinking. Divorce? Margot? Nonsense! But wait! If this suggestion of Margot Devereux having a lover were true—as Doris insisted and even Celia had suspected—that altered everything. Margot might have put up with any kind of unhappy home life rather than the alternative of divorce. But if she happened to fall violently in love, and wanted to marry: yes, that altered everything.)

"I regret the necessity for repeating the question," said Dr. Fell, who was genuinely distressed. "But was it to ask you for a divorce?"

"No," replied Thorley, with his eye on a corner of the window embrasure.

"In that case, sir, I must go into matters that will be painful and embarrassing. You are aware," Dr. Fell touched the envelope on the table, "of certain statements made by Celia Devereux?"

'Yes. God knows I am"

"That on one occasion you were seen to slash your wife across the face with a razor strap?" "Yes!" cried Thorley. "But that was only—" "Only what?"

Statement and question were flung at each other with such quickness that they seemed to clash like physical forces.

Dr. Fell had partly surged up, the ridges of his waistcoat jarring out the table with a scratch of wood and a rattle of the red-shaded lamp. But he did not seem to be towering or threatening: only, in a curious way, imploring. Thorley had slid off the chair arm and stood up.

"Only what, Mr. Marsh?"

"Only a lie," said Thorley. "Only a lie."

Dr. Fell sank back, a mountain of dejection.

"And that on another occasion, because of your conduct, your wife attempted to kill herself by swallowing strychnine?"

"That’s a lie too."

The grisly story was pouring out now. Locke and his daughter sat as though paralyzed.

"And that, on the night your wife died, there was a bottle labeled poison in the medicine cabinet of your joint bathroom?"

"There never was any such bottle, so help me!"-"And that—"

"Stop," said Thorley. His hand went to his collar, running a finger around inside it; then he cleared his throat, and spoke in a perfectly normal voice. "I've had enough," he added. "I've had more than any man can take."

‘Yes?" said Dr. Fell.

"Look here, sir." Thorley addressed Dr. Fell, though a little breathlessly, with his quiet and easy charm. "These charges against me are all guff. What's more, I can prove they're all guff at any time I like. I haven't done it up to now, I've put up with everything, because I wanted to be decent. That’s finished."

And then, just when as a man cornered and down-and-out he had the utter sympathy of nearly everyone there, the illusion was shattered. Thorley's tone changed.

"By God," he said, "I've had enough of a family with one ice-cold daughter and one crazy daughter. As for this house, I hope it rots. Those pictures over there," he gestured toward the wall behind him, "let them do something about it; as Celia says they can. I've liked Celia. I've done my best for Celia. I've put up with it when she's told me these things in private. But, from now on, just let her dare say the same things in front of anyone else! Just let her dare do it!"

They had heard no sound in the Long Gallery, no creak of footstep. A little way behind Thorley, looking full at him, stood Celia.

CHAPTER X

Celia, just as she had looked last night: even to being dressed in white. Celia, with the beauty of the imaginative fine-drawn face untouched by any emotion, even anger. Her gray eyes, with the black pin-point pupils perhaps dilating a little, were fixed on Thorley. But just beyond Celia...

Looming up beyond her, his hand under her elbow in a proprietary way, was a tall man in some mysterious season between youth and middle age. A man with a confident bearing, a dental smile, wearing a gray suit of such admirable cut and newness as only influence can procure nowadays, and having hair the color of a lion's mane with a wave in it.

Thorley, as though warned by a telepathic instinct, had swung round toward them.

"Derek!" he exclaimed. "What the devil are you doing here?"

(At last, thought Holden, Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore! But he didn't need Thorley’s words to guess it The hair did that - Ugh, you swine!)

Now in this, as anyone could have told him, he was doing Mr. Hurst-Gore a complete injustice. Everyone knew that Mr. Hurst-Gore was a fine fellow, who meant well in everything he did.

"Doing here?" Mr. Hurst-Gore repeated, in a rich confident voice. "Oh, I'm everywhere." He smiled. "As a matter of fact, I came down with Dr. Fell. We're both staying at the Warrior's Arms."

Despite his smile, Mr. Hunt-Gore kept looking at Thorley in a fixed, meaningful, heavily significant way.

"Thorley!"

"Well?"

"There must be no scandal," said Mr. Hunt-Gore, very slowly and in the same significant tone. "But, listen, Derekl They're now saying it was murder!" "I know." "But—!"

"Remember the Frinley by-election?"

Holden couldn't see Thorley's face. But he sensed a change in the broad back, and the movement as though Thorley would put up his hands to shield his eyes.

"There is one thing," said Mr. Hurst-Gore, still holding Celia's elbow in a proprietary way, "that a man in public life mustn't do. He mustn't show himself a fool."

Thorley stood for a moment motionless. Then, with affection and tenderness rushing out of his voice, he turned to Celia.

"My dear Celia!" he said reproachfully. "My dear girl! You shouldn't have come downstairs tonight! Here!"

Hurrying to one side, Thorley rolled forward an easy chair whose casters squeaked abominably on the wooden floor and strip of brown carpet Though Celia shrank as though she had been burnt when he touched her, she was so amazed that she allowed him to push her down into the chair.

"If you do this sort of thing often," he added, with a sort of reproachful beam, "Old Uncle Thorley will have to speak severely to you. Did I tell you, by the way, that I brought down a special vintage of port for you? Never mind where I got it Sh-h!" Thorley winked. "But you won't find a wine like it anywhere in London."

Celia looked up at him helplessly.

"Thorley," she said," I don't understand you!"

"I'm the Inimitable, my dear. I'm the Sparkler. But why . don't you understand me?"

"One minute you're shouting for my blood. And the next minute you're—you're pouring port over me."

"Live and let live," shrugged Thorley. "That’s my motto. After all, Celia, we did live in the same house for six months with a flag of truce between us."

"Yes! But that was only because—" Celia stopped.

"Why did you come down tonight, Celia?"

"I have an appointment with Dr. Fell."

Thorley looked startled. "You know Dr. Fell?"

"Oh, yes. Very well." Now for the first time Celia's eye met Holden's; an intense awareness sprang between them across that gap, as Celia had seemed last night; but she colored and turned away.

"I think," Celia swallowed, "that everyone here knows everyone else. Except: Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore ... Sir Donald Holden."

And up went the emotional temperature still higher. The two men shook hands.

"A pleasure!'' declared Mr. Hunt-Gore, flashing his dental smile. Seen at close range, the countenance under the wavy hair seemed older, and harder, and shrewder. "You mustn't mind me, you know; I'm everywhere. An old, old friend of Celia's. We've had some very good times together in the past"

(You have, have you?)

"She spoke to me about you just now," continued Mr. Hurst-Gore, cordially breezy, "when I went up to her room and had a talk with her."

"Indeed."

"I was thinking," pursued Mr. Hurst-Gore, "that meeting you was like meeting some character out of a play. With you playing the Mysterious Stranger."

"Oddly enough," said Holden, "I was just now thinking the same thing about you."

"Were you, my dear fellow? How?"

"With you," said Holden, "playing Mephistopheles to Thorley's Faust."

Mr. Hurst-Gore's eyes narrowed. "That’s rather perceptive of you."

"Well try to be perspective, won't we? In a murder case?"

"Oh, that!" Mr. Hurst-Gore dismissed it with a really friendly laugh. "Well soon explode all that nonsense, about suicide and murder too, when Dr. Fell looks into it The birds will sing again. You'll see. In fact, if I may say so in this assembled company..."

"Hey!" boomed a thunderous voice.

It was that of Dr. Fell who was also rapping the ferrule of his crutch-handled stick against the floor. He loomed above them, turning his head from side to side with a piratical air and vast sniffs above the bandit's moustache.

"Sir," he said, "I am deeply gratified to hear that the birds will sing again. It also gratifies me (by thunder, it does!) that outward amiability has been restored. We are sitting in a cosy little alcove of hatred, with all drafts blowing. Control it; or we shall get nowhere."

'You were," Celia said, "you were questioning witnesses!"

"There is only one witness I want to question."

"Oh?" demanded Thorley. "And who's that?"

"You, confound it!" said Dr. Fell.

All his piratical air dissolved. He leaned forward, his left elbow on the table.

"Up there," and Dr. Fell slightly raised the crutch-handled stick toward the ceiling, "a woman died. She died by means so well-contrived that under the circumstances (I repeat, under the circumstances, any doctor would have been fooled into calling it a natural death. We are now immediately underneath the bathroom where a bottle of poison was, or was not, in the medicine cabinet."

"It was!" cried Celia.

"It was not," Thorley said smoothly.

Dr. Fell paid no attention to this.

"For nearly three mortal hours—between half-past eleven, when you all went to bed; and a quarter-past two, when Dr. Shepton arrived for the first time—Mr. Marsh was apparently the only person who saw his wife, touched her, went near her, or was even within calling distance of her.

"If he tells the truth, we can reconstruct what happened. But, if, as seems likely, the gifted Mr. Hurst-Gore has persuaded him to keep silent..."

While Mr. Hurst-Gore uttered an astounded protest, Thorley came quickly around from behind Celia's chair and stood in front of the table.

"I promised to tell you what happened that night," he declared. "And, so help me, I will!"

"Excellent! Admirable!" observed Dr. Fell. With one elbow on the table, he pointed a finger at Thorley. "Now picture the scene again. The four of you arrived back from the Lockes'. What happened then?"

"Well, we went up to bed ..."

"No, no, no!" groaned Dr. Fell, making a hideous face and snapping his fingers. "Please be more detailed than that. Presumably you didn't just open the front door and rush frantically upstairs?"

"Celia did, anyway. I think the Murder game upset her. I didn't care for it much myself, to tell you the truth."

"But the rest of you?"

"Margot and Derek and I came through this gallery here,"

Thorley moved his neck, "and up those little steps to the Blue Drawing Room. There was a big fire there, and a decanter of whisky. The—the room was decorated with holly, but we weren't going to put up the Christmas tree until next day."

Very distinctly, beyond the lamp-lit table between Thorley and Dr. Fell, Holden could see the faces of the others.

Of Sir Danvers Locke, aloof yet intensely watchful. Of Doris, flushed as though she were choking, so upset by recent experience that she could not have spoken if she had wanted to. Of Derek Hurst-Gore, lounging against the window wall beside him. And, above all, of Celia.

What in Satan's name was wrong with Celia? Why had she refused to see him? Why, even now, did she refuse to look at him? Why did there breathe from her, with that radiation which in one we love we can almost feel with a physical sense, the message of, "Keep away! Please keep away!"

And yet...

Something was being woven, something being spun, as Dr. Fell held Thorley fascinated. The spectral image bruit itself up: of Caswall's galleries dark and gusty cold, of dead Margot in her silver gown, and her two companions in white ties and tails, going up to a bright fire in a blue-paneled room where there would be a decanter of whisky.

"Yes, Mr. Marsh? And then?"

"I turned on the radio. It was singing carols."

"A very important question; and oblige me by not laughing at it. Were you drunk?"

"No! All of us were only... oh, all right! Yes! I was pretty tight"

"How tight?"

"Not blind, or anything like that But muzzy eyed, and uncertain, and hating everything. Liquor," said Thorley in a vague way, "always used to make me feel happy. It never does, now."

"What about your wife? That night I mean?"

"Margot’d knocked back quite a lot; but it didn't seem to affect her much, as it usually does. I mean—as it usually did."

"And Mr. Hurst-Gore?"

"Old Derek was pretty nearly blind. He started reciting Hamlet or something. I remember he said he hoped there wouldn't be a fire in the night because nobody would be able to wake him."

"And then?"

"There wasn't anything. Margot banged down her glass and said, ‘You two don't seem very happy; but I'm happy. Shall we turn in?' So we did."

"The bedrooms occupied by Celia Devereux and Mr. Hurst-Gore, I understand, weren't near your own suite?"

"No. They were at the other side of the house."

"Do you remember anything else about this time?" Dr. Fell's big voice grew even softer and more hypnotic. "Think! Think! Think!"

"I remember hearing Obey locking up front and back. It makes a devil of a racket with those bolts."

"Nothing else? When you and your wife reached your rooms? What then?"

"Margot opened the door of her bedroom and went in. I opened the door of my bedroom and went in. That's all"

"Did you exchange any words at this time?"

"No, no, no! Not a word!"

Thorley was not merely telling this; he was reliving it He was treading the misty steps of that night, his eyes fixed on it "And then?"

"I felt lousy," Thorley said. "It infuriates you, getting out of evening kit when you're tight You have to tear the collar off; you have to tear the shirt off. You stumble against things. I got my pyjamas on and sort of stumbled into the bathroom to clean my teeth."

"Into the bathroom. Was the door to your wife's bedroom, on the other side of the bathroom, open or closed?"

"It was closed and locked on her side."

"How do you know it was locked?"

"It always was."

'You cleaned your teeth. And then?" "I went back into my bedroom and slammed the door and went to bed. But that’s the trouble. I wasn't tight enough." "Go on!"

"It wasn't one of those nights where the bed swings around and you fly out into nowhere: dead asleep. I Just dozed heavily, and partly woke up, and dozed again. All confused. But I must have fallen off pretty heavily, because there seemed to be an interval. Then something woke me."

"What woke you? Think! Was it noise?"

"I don't know." Thorley, in a dream, shook his head. "Then I thought I heard Margot’s voice, sort of moaning and groaning and calling for help a long way off."

"Go on."

"I sat up and switched on the light I felt sick and headachy but a good deal more sober. It was two o'clock by the bedside dock. The voice moaning—it was awful. I climbed out of bed and went over and opened the bathroom door."

(Not a soul in that window embrasure moved, or even seemed to breathe.)

"Was the light on in the bathroom?"

"No, but I turned it on. The door to Margot's bedroom was wide open. Oh, yes! And while I'd been asleep, Margot’d taken a bath."

"She'd taken a bath?"

"Yes. There was a towel across the edge of the tub, and the floor was wet. God, how it annoyed me: that wet floor, and me in my bare feet! I went back and got my slippers, and came in again. Everything seemed quiet I looked into Margot’s bedroom."

Not a muscle or a fold of flesh moved in Dr. Fell's face or body. His propped elbow and pointing hand remained steady. Yet his eyes flashed round; moved with an unnerving furtive air, as though he were remembering and summing up. But the spell remained unbroken. Both their voices grew thicker, as Thorley walked back further and further into that night

"I looked into her bedroom. The light wasn't on, but I could tell she wasn't there." "Were the curtains drawn?"

"No; that's how I could tell she wasn't there. There was a little light from outside, stars or something. The bedspread was smooth and hadn't been touched. It was all quiet, and as cold as hell. Then the moaning and crying started again, so loud it nearly made me jump out of my skin. I saw the line of light under the door to her sitting room."

"Go on!"

Thorley spoke loudly and quickly.

"I opened the door. It was warm in there, with a fire still burning in the grate. All the wall lamps were burning too. A little way back from the middle of the room, with a table beside it, there's one of those chaise-longue things with cushions."

"Go on!"

"Margot was lying on it on her back, only a bit sideways. Her mouth sort of jabbered. I said, 'Margot!' but she just moaned and twisted; her eyes didn't open. I hoisted up her shoulders against the back of the chaise longue—she wasn't any lightweight—and her head fell forward. I shook her, but that wasn't any good either. Then I was really scared. I rushed back into the bathroom."

"Was the poison bottle in the medicine cabinet at that time?"

"No, it was gone. Margot must have . .." Dead silence.

Thorley realized what he had said. His voice stopped in midflight, faltered, slowly repeated, "must—have," and then trailed away. He stood there, shocked awake but petrified, his dark eyes glazed.

Dr. Fell let his arm fall on the table.

"So we perceive," Dr. Fell remarked, without satisfaction or even without any inflection at all, "that there had been in that cabinet a small brown bottle labeled poison. Just as Miss Devereux said."

Still nobody moved. On that group around the table, one of whom at least had been holding his breath until he felt suffocated, remained a strange and terrifying numbness. They seemed in a void, among the portraits of the Long Gallery.

"That was a trick," Thorley said. His voice rose. "A dirty, filthy trick!"

"No," returned Dr. Fell.

He laid down his crutch-handled stick across the glass top of the table.

"Sir," continued Dr. Fell, "I had reasons of my own for looking on you with an eye of extreme suspicion. If you had known of that brown bottle in the medicine cabinet, your first impulse at finding your wife in a dying condition would have been to rush back and look for the bottle. I—harrumph —merely led you to it You follow me?"

Danvers Locke, elegant and aloof, rose to his feet

"It's getting rather late," he observed. "I think, Doris, we had better go."

Celia was standing up, her eyes glistening with tears.

"I'm not going to crow over you, Thorley," she said. "But don't you ever, ever, ever, as long as you live, go about telling people I'm insane." Celia's whole manner changed. She ooked at Holden, trying to keep her face straight against the tears, and held out her hands to him.

"Darling!" Celia said. Then he was beside her, gripping her hands tightly enough to hurt, looking down at her eyes as he had looked last night, under the trees beside the park. "Listen, for God's sake," shouted Thorley.

There was so much pleading urgency in it that they swung round in spite of themselves.

"I want to answer that," gritted Thorley. "I've got a right to answer it." He swallowed. "It's true I did lie about that one little point, yes! But I thought it was for a good reason. I .. ."

" 'That one little point?'" echoed Holden. He could not even hate Thorley now; he could only regard the man with awe. "You know, Thorley, you're a beauty! You really are a beauty! You told the truth about everything else, I suppose?"

'Yes, I did!"

"It won't do, Thorley. You've been maintaining it was a delusion of Celia's that Margot changed her gown in the middle of the night, and put on a black velvet dress instead of the silver one. Whereas there's a witness to prove that's exactly what Margot did."

"Oh?" inquired Thorley coolly. "You think you're getting smart, like all the rest of them. And who's the perjurer who says that?"

"Your strongest supporter. Doris Locke."

Doris let out a cry. Her father immediately and blandly stepped in front of her chair, as though to shield Doris even from their sight

"I think, Doris, we had really better be going."

Along the gallery had creaked the footsteps of Obey, Obey in a hurry, yet so deftly did she move, leaning over and whispering earnestly to Dr. Fell, that they were not conscious of her presence until Dr. Fell uttered an exclamation and surged to his feet, thrusting the long envelope into his pocket.

"O Lord! Oh Bacchus!" muttered Dr. Fell. "The appointment! I had completely forgotten. I sincerely trust the sexton is drunk. Er—my dear Holden!"

"Yes?"

Dr. Fell, completely scatterbrained now that he was not concentrating on anything, blinked round him in distress.

"My corporeal shape, while perhaps majestic," he said, "is not altogether suitable for bending and touching the floor. In some mysterious manner," he rumbled at his eyeglasses, "my hat and my other cane seem to have fallen off the table. If you wouldn't mind? ... Ah! Thank 'ee. Yes. That's better! Let me remind you that we have an urgent appointment"

And he lumbered out of the embrasure, supporting himself on two canes. It was so unexpected, it left them so much in mid-air, that even Locke spoke in protest

"Dr. Fell!"

"Hey?"

"May I ask," inquired Locke in a voice brittle with anger, "whether this inquiry is ended?"

"Ended. H'mf. Well. Not precisely ended." Dr. Fell shook his head. "But I think, you know, the situation is fairly dear."

"Clear!" said Locke. "In some respects, yes. You said you could solve our problem, and to a great extent I think you have. What do you propose to do?"

"Do?"

"Our friend Marsh here," stated Locke, "has been caught in at least one flat lie of utterly damning quality. Must I repeat the rest of the tag about falsus in uno? What do you propose to do?"

"Do?" again repeated Dr. Fell, with sudden ferocity. "God bless the police, what can I do? The man's quite innocent"

Holden felt, not for the first time in this affair or yet the last that his wits were turning upside down.

"Innocent?" said Locke. "Innocent of what?"

"Mr. Marsh," replied Dr. Fell, "never mistreated or abused his wife in any way. He didn't drive her to suicide. And he didn't kill her."

Celia's hands, in Holden's, had first tightened and then gone limp. She snatched her hands away, and pressed them over her face. Celia began to rock back and forth, soundlessly, while he gripped her shoulders and tried to steady her.

Then occurred something which was almost worse. Across the face of Mr. Dereck Hurst-Gore, who had been lounging there almost unnoticed, moved an airy and serene smile. He glanced at Thorley, and the glance said as plainly as print: You see? Didn't I tell you there'd be no trouble? I arranged this.

"Dr. Fell," said Holden, "are you trying to maintain, in spite of all the evidence, that Celia isn t—isn't in her right senses?"

"Great Scott, No" thundered Dr. Fell. "Of course she's in her right senses!"

He rapped the ferrules of both canes against the floor. For the first time he looked fully at Celia. In that look, jumbled up, were affection and kindliness and yet disquiet

"Though Thorley Marsh quite sincerely won't believe it" Dr. Fell said, "there isn't a psychopathic trait in that girl's nature. But I must make sure (curse it, if you could only see!) that she isn't. . ."

‘Isn’t what?’ Locke asked sharply.

"Sir," said Dr. Fell, with an enormous wheeze of breath, "I have an appointment."

And he wheeled around, the great cloak billowing behind him, and lumbered at his ponderous pace toward the steps to the Painted Room.

CHAPTER XI

Under the brilliance of a full moon, in a sky without cloud, the south fields in front of Caswall still held a tinge of green-gray.

Donald Holden, hurrying out across the stone bridge, saw some distance ahead of him the figure of Dr. Fell stumping westward toward the tree-lined drive. Beyond that lay another immense meadow, and then the precincts of Caswall Church. Holden raced after him through the long grass.

But Dr. Fell did not hear.

He was completely absorbed, talking to himself aloud in a way which might have made his own sanity suspect, and occasionally flourishing one cane in the air by way of emphasis. Holden caught the end of this address.

"If only he hadn't worn his slippers!" groaned Dr. Fell. The cane flourished again. "Archons of Athens, if only the fellow hadn't worn his slippers!"

"Dr. Fell!"

The shout at last penetrated. Dr. Fell swept around, just under one of the chestnut trees lining the white gravel of the drive. He was now wearing his shovel hat.

"Oh, ah!" he said, peering to recognize Holden. "I—har-rumph—imagined you weren't coming."

"And I wouldn't have come," retorted Holden, "if Celia hadn't begged me to go after you. Seriously, Dr. Fell: you can't get away with it."

"Get away with what?"

Holden nodded toward the house. "There's merry blazes to pay back there!"

"I feared as much," admitted Dr. Fell, adjusting his features with an extremely guilty air. "Are they—er—at each other's throats?"

"No! They're just sitting and looking half-wittedly at each other. That's the point You can't leave it at that You've said either too little or too much."

"Bear witness," said Dr. Fell, pointing one cane, "that I tried to get out of there without answering questions. But you were all too upset. I couldn't put you off by spouting mystical hocus-pocus. I had to tell the truth."

"But what is the truth?"

"We-ell . . ."

"Let me see if I understand your position. Thorley Marsh tells a string of whoppers, especially about the two most important points, in the case: the poison bottle and the changing of the gown. You then announce that Thorley is guiltless, sweet scented, innocent of everything from wife-beating to murder!"

"But hang it all!" protested Dr. Fell, and screwed up his face hideously. "It was just because he told lies, don't you see, that I knew he was telling the truth."

Holden stared at him.

"Paradox," he said politely, "is doubtless admirable . .."

"It is not paradox, my dear sir. It is the literal truth."

"Well, take the next bit. You say it's nonsense to think Celia has ever been out of her senses, which is fine and grand. But you instantly qualify it by some—some half-suggestion .. ."

"Dash it all!" said Dr. Fell.

"Then the position is," asked Holden, "that both Celia and Thorley have been telling the truth? And that somehow they've just been misunderstanding each other, all through these bitter months. Is that it?"

Dr. Fell's shovel hat was stuck forward on his head, the eye-glasses faintly gleaming under it by moonlight. He struck at the grass with his right-hand cane.

"Apparently," he assented, "that is it"

"But that’ s impossible!"

"How so?"

"Those two long statements of Celia and Thorley, covering a period of years and concerning Margot simply won't reconcile. They're oil and water. They won't mix. Either a person is telling the truth, or he isn't"

"Not necessarily," said Dr. Fell.

"But—!"

"Before too long a time, when I propose to tell you the whole story," said Dr. Fell, "you may have reason to change your mind. In the meantime, we have an errand."

"Yes! And, if you'll forgive my insistence, that's another thing."

"Oh?"

"Dr. Fell, how is it that you know so much more of this affair than you could possibly have learned from any letter of Celia's to Scotland Yard? What sort of game is being played between you and Celia? I’ll swear there is one. Did she tell you the story of Margot's death?"

"No!" roared Dr. Fell, and viciously cut at the grass with his cane. "If only she had! Oh, my hat, if only she had!" He lowered his voice, wheezing less noisily. He looked very steadily at Holden. "You may have heard, perhaps, that Celia Devereux has been seeing ghosts?"

"Yes. But Celia doesn't suffer from delusions!"

"Exactly," agreed Dr. Fell. "It was just because she seemed to be seeing ghosts, you understand, that I knew she wasn't suffering from delusions."

Again Holden stared at him.

"Dr. Fell I'm like Thorley. I'm afraid I can't take it. That's the second paradox in two minutes. But you don't want to hear someone talk like that, and play with words, when you're waiting for the hangman and yet hoping for a reprieve. I'm getting as desperate as Celia."

Dr. Fell pointed with the cane.

"I say to you," he declared, with extraordinary intensity, "that it is neither paradox nor playing with words. You should have realized it, from evidence placed squarely in front of you. And now," he hesitated, we are going to open the tomb. And—"

"And?"

"It is the one part of this affair," said Dr. Fell, "which really frightens me. Come along."

In silence they walked across the drive, under trees again, and into the west meadow. A little distance away, rising up among oaks and beeches and a few cypresses, was the low square tower of Caswall Church.

In that gray church, ageless now, lay the stone effigy of Sir Walter D'Estreville, in stone chain mail, with his feet resting on a stone lion to show that he had been to the Crusades. When he died, in Palestine, under the Black Cross of the Templars, Lady D'Estreville took the veil to quit this world, and Caswall House became Caswall Abbey. His effigy lay there now, as Caswall did, in memory of the love that dieth not.

And there were other memories, too.

"I, Margot, take thee, Thorley," the husky contralto voice could barely be heard, "to my wedded husband." It rose again, ghostlike. "To have and to hold from this day forward. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness, and in health. Till..."

He could see the colors, and hear the organ music.

And, as they approached, there was the little iron fence close along the east side of the church: its gate now hanging open and a little rusty. Beyond was the low square tower, the church door being around at the other side. When you turned to the left past the tower, there was the path where he had met Celia.

On his left, now, the rough west wall with its pointed windows. On his right, arching over, the beech trees which guarded an ill-kept churchyard. The same breath of dry-baked mud and dew-wet grass, touching one's nostrils with even the scent of the past. Moonlight filtered down through the leaves, whose shadows were trembling where no wind seemed to stir.

And it was not only Celia's image. It was all the vastness of time. Dr. Fell, at his elbow, spoke softly. "What are you thinking?"

"But, Mother of God, where are they, then? And where are the snows of yesteryear?' "

There was a silence. The old words seemed to ring softly, gently, in this gentle place.

Dr. Fell nodded without speaking. He led the way past the beeches into a little expanse of unkempt grass where many headstones, some at crooked angles and black-worn by time, stood amid a thickness of cypresses. Westward the churchyard stretched up into a hill; by some illusion of moonlight, there seemed to be fewer gravestones than there were trees.

Holden had a sudden recollection of an Italian churchyard, and of a face over a Luger pistol peering at him around a headstone. But this was swept away. In the flat ground ahead, facing them at the end of a crooked little lane of flat graves raised two or three feet above ground, loomed up a shape he had never noticed before.