'Damn and blast,' said Sanders.

  'Sure,' agreed H. M.

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

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

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

  Masters chuckled benevolently.

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

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

  'That woman is still in danger.'

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

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

  He said:

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

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

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

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

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

  Sanders shrugged his shoulders.

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

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

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

  (It was at this point that an extraordinary change went over H. M.'s face. It was exactly as though he were setting and puffing out his features to deliver a resounding raspberry, but it faded off into excited wonder.)

  'Oh, my eye!' he muttered’

  'Sir?'

  'Never mind, son. I was cogitatin'.' Masters turned round on him with deepest and darkest suspicion.

  'I tell you I was cogitatin'!' insisted H. M. 'Go on. What I was thinkin' about don't affect your case. I was only thinkin' about the spots of candle-grease on the carpet, and exactly where they were. Burn me, Masters, why do you always think I'm tryin' to do you in the eye?'

  'Because usually you are,' said the chief inspector, briefly. 'Now see here, sir -'

  'Go on with your case,' said Sanders. 'How does Pennik fit into it?'

  'Isn't it clear as daylight, Doctor? Pennik knew about it, or guessed about it. He knew when she was going to do it, and why she was going to do it. So when it happened he simply used it to strengthen and bolster up his ruddy hocus-pocus of murder by telepathy. Mind you, he didn't commit himself too far by saying too much before it happened. He only said it might happen. Then it did happen; and for the first time he came out boldly and swore he did it. Eh? I'm pretty sure he wasn't in cahoots with her over it.’ He only used her. That's why she's so blinking wild and bitter against him now. That much of her carryings-on I'll admit

  ‘In looking over my notes of this case, even now I am struck with the number of suggestions that were made about various people working as somebody else's accomplice. It will, perhaps, allow better concentration if I state here that the murderer in this case worked entirely alone, and had no confederate who either knew the murderer's plan or rendered material assistance in any way. The reader is warned. - J. S.

  as genuine and sincere. Here's Pennik going about saying he did it, whereas she has thumping good reason to know he didn't do it. I ask you straight:, doesn't that explain all the inconsistencies we've got on our hands ?'

  'It does if she's loopy,' said H. M.

  'I don't follow that.'

  'Oh, Masters, my son! Wouldn't you call it just a little bit too conscientious? Does she get as mad at him as all that just because he walks in and assumes all the blame for her own crime?'

  Masters brooded. 'I'm not so sure, sir. Might be the best kind of bluff.'

  'It might be. It might fit; in which case her "challenge" is pure bluff. It's a good case, apart from the triflin' fact that we couldn't prove it even if we knew it was true. All I know is that parts of it are true. They must be; and in spite of your worryin', son,' - he looked malevolently at Sanders - 'that woman is as safe here to-night as though we'd got her packed in cotton-wool in the middle of the Bank of England. Now we got to be off, or we'll make Joe Keen's daughter miss her train. Goo'-night, son. Come on, Masters.'

  Dr Sanders stood in the doorway at Fourways and watched the tail-light of the police-car vanish among the trees. It was chillier now. He looked for a moment at the clear starlight over the trees. Then he went inside, where he closed, locked, and bolted the front door. He was alone in the house with a quiet, pleasant little woman whom two of his colleagues believed to be a murderess. This made him smile. He was also alone with what was to prove one of the worst nights of his life.

  CHAPTER XII

  His first sensation, as he remembered afterwards, was one of freedom and almost of cheerfulness.

  He could settle down to read, or to consider his own personal problems, in the luxuriance of being alone. Maybe he ought not to leave all these lights blazing in somebody else's house, but they suited his mood and he did not feel of an economical turn. Remarkable, though, how wiry and receptive your nerves and ears and even eyes seemed to become under the mere weight of silence. Everything looked just a little larger and sharper than life. Everything, from the fall of your shoe on unglazed tiles to the brushing of your sleeve across the leaves of a potted palm, seemed to have a clarity of sound which shook like a note in music.

  He went into the drawing-room, where the polished oak floor was even more noisy. It was growing definitely cold here, so he closed the long window. As an afterthought he went back and locked it. All the windows on this floor stretched to the ground, it occurred to him: were they all locked? When you came to consider it, such houses were nothing more than a series of open arches.

  Wandering into the dining-room, he considered the great dark pictures and the massive plate on the sideboard. There was a half-finished flagon of beer in the sideboard, he remembered. He brought it out, put it down on the table with what seemed a very loud bump, and went to fetch a glass from a deep china-closet which showed him, unexpectedly, his own reflection in a mirror inside. He also brought a china ash-tray from the sideboard, an ash-tray which rattled and clattered and perversely bumped up against something whenever you put ash in it.

  The beer, warmish, frothed a good deal. With patient effort he filled the glass, lighted a cigarette, and sat down beside the big round table to consider.

  It might be interesting one day to write a monograph on the medical aspects of the emotion called fear. It had been treated before, of course; but not until he sorted out facts for his little report to Masters had he realized the depths and mists in that field called nervous shock. It was a new territory, almost a new quicksand. Several persons here "had suffered from it, including Hilary. And - come to think of it - he had not yet learned what Hilary saw. Taking a more concrete example, let us suppose that Sam Constable had died of nervous shock as the result of something seen or heard or prepared for that purpose.

  Behind him, the swing-door to the kitchen creaked' and cracked sharply.

  He did not jump up, as-his impulse was. He waited for the fraction of a second, and then glanced back casually over his shoulder.

  He saw nothing, knowing that he should see nothing. That jump, for which he felt annoyed, had been caused by the mere sudden movement of an inanimate thing. Draughts or contraction of wood or whatever the cause, it is the small stir of the inanimate which brushes nerves the wrong way. He noticed that the kitchen was dark; also dark was the conservatory, which he could see through a closed glass door.

  But it was not the best time, probably, for analysing the nature of nerves. Better be up and doing something. Better go up and see how Mina Constable was getting on.

  Extinguishing his cigarette, he finished the beer and went upstairs. When he knocked at the door of her room he received no answer, nor did he expect one; the morphia would have done its work by that time. He opened the door very softly and looked in.

  Mina's bed was empty.

  The bedclothes were thrown back in some disarray, showing a sort of throat of crisp white sheets which shone in the light of the bedside lamp. Pillows were punched into confusion; and a dressing-gown and slippers, which he remembered having seen when Mina went docilely to bed at nine o'clock, had now gone. Yet the bathroom was empty. And this room and her husband's were blank dark blurs where no person could care to sit or lurk for pleasure.

  'Mrs Constable!' he called.

  She ought to answer that.

  'Mrs Constable!'

  There is no more disturbing realization than that a person, who is confined with you within the four walls of a house, must hear you but for some reason chooses not to reply. It is too much like an unpleasant game. Yet Mina continued to hide.

  He made a search of the room, half expecting to find her in the wardrobe and wondering what he should say if he did find her there. A real seizure this time? But the slippers and dressing-gown did not fit in with that. He hurried through the bathroom, barking his shins on the bronze-painted metal of the heater and tipping over a drinking-glass, which fell with a hellish ringing clatter into the wash-basin. That noise sobered him. Quietly he set about looking into every room on that floor, including his own. Then he went downstairs, to find a slight alteration in die look of the lower hall. The tall folding doors to the drawing-room, which he was certain he had left open, were now closed.

  The telephone began to ring as he pulled the doors open; it almost muddled his errand, for he never realized that die thing had such a tongue. It continued to ring while he looked round the room, and angered him. Better answer it. When he picked up the receiver he found it was still warm from recent contact with a hand.

  'Hello,' said a persuasive voice. 'Is this Grovetop three-one?'

  'No. Yes,' said Sanders, clearing his throat and looking at the dial. 'What is it?'

  'This is the Daily Non-Stop. May I speak to Miss Shields, please?'

  'To whom? Oh! Sorry, Miss Shields is indisposed and regrets that she cannot make -'

  "That's quite all right, Doctor,' interposed Mina's voice, speaking at his ear. Mina's face appeared at his shoulder.

  Mina's arm, thin and brown and rather freckled out of the loose sleeve of the dressing-gown, moved past his own; and she took the receiver. 'Hello? Yes, speaking. Well, now you've rung me back, are you convinced it wasn't a hoax? ... Yes, yes, I quite understand you have to be careful... Yes, print it, or as much as you dare ... No, that's quite all right; but I can't talk to you any longer, really I can't; I'm not well; yes, thank you very much. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.'

  She clattered the receiver down on its hook and stood back.

  'I'm so sorry to have to deceive you,' said Mina, looking up at him after a pause. 'But I told them they couldn't keep me away from the telephone for ever. As soon as they'd. gone, I came down here. I was waiting. They'd have stopped me.'

  Sanders also stood back.

  'That's quite all right, Mrs Constable.'

  'Now you're annoyed.'

  (Of course I'm annoyed. Who the hell wouldn't be annoyed?)

  'That's quite all right, Mrs Constable. If I want to make a fool of myself, that's my affair.' He remembered himself shouting all over the house, betraying his state of mind with every word. 'But will you tell me how you manage to be so spry after that dose of morphia ?'

  'I didn't take it,' retorted Mina, with the desperate and triumphant cunning of a genuinely ill woman. He saw that hysterical cunning, and relented. 'I only pretended to take it, you see. And now I've got back at Pennik; I've got back at him. They wouldn't print all I told them, because they said it was slander or libel or something; but there's enough, there's enough, there's enough. He'll look a proper fool, M. Vaudois will. Did you know? A professor aboard our ship used to call Pennik M. Vaudois; I don't know why; but it made him look like fire. And now I've done it. I'm going upstairs now and take my medicine, then I shall be all right,'

  ‘You certainly are. Off you go, now!'

  ‘But you'll come up with me, won't you? I'm alone, and it seems worse to be alone now than it did during the day. All the rats have left the ship. Except you.'

  'It's all right, Mrs Constable. Come along.'

  On the landing above them the great clock rang with fluid chimes, echoing, and began to strike ten. It was twenty minutes past ten before he had got her to bed again, had seen to it that this time she swallowed the tablet, had tucked the dressing-gown round her, and heard the dull mutter of exhaustion as the drug took effect. With her head under a pillow, she crumpled up and slept.

  Without dreams, he hoped. He took her pulse, studied her for a time with his watch in his hand, and turned out the light. Yet this apparently sincere woman, he reflected as he went downstairs, had lied up-hill-down-dale over every place where she could possibly have lied.

  One thing, however, the sharp edge of that disappearance scare had done for him. It had cured him (or he thought it had cured him) of nervous disturbances without foundation. Once was enough. It only left him restless and strung up beyond any hope of sleep. He knew that he ought to turn in, for he had work to do to-morrow, but he also knew that it would be useless. He prowled or sat, always coming back to the dining-room. One interval he filled up by going round and locking every door or window on the ground floor, another by glancing over a rather dull collection of books in the library. Ten-thirty rang from, the clock on the stairs; then a quarter to eleven, then the hour itself.

  It was close to eleven-thirty when he thought he saw Herman Pennik's face looking at him through the glass door to the conservatory.

  Sanders afterwards remembered that the tumbler, from which he had been drinking the last of the beer in the flagon, slipped through his fingers and smashed in a star of brown froth on the dining-room table. He had simply looked round, and there it was.

  For some time he had been conscious of a faint noise: a noise, in fact, so dim as to be rather a vibration, a pressure on the ears, than a sound. He vaguely associated it with water, and then realized that it must be the miniature fountain in the conservatory, soberly falling after Sam Constable's death as before it. Turning round in his chair to see, he looked at the glass door of the conservatory - and Pennik looked back at him.

  He was across the room so quickly that he did not remember leaving his chair. For a second he thought it might have been his own reflexion, in gleams of light against a door to a dark room, until he saw Pennik's nose and fingers pressed against and flattened out in greyish-white blobs on the glass. Then Pennik bolted. Sanders threw open the door, to meet a rush of hot over-scented air from the plants - and silence.

  He stood in the doorway. No light, no noise, no movement of any kind, until he blundered forward and set moving a jungle-brush of sound by walking into plants. He could not remember the position of the light-switch. Groping through the aisles, he knew that to search here was useless; and for another reason. One of the long stained-glass windows, which he had locked a while ago, was now open: a way of escape.

  Mina Constable?

  Mina Constable, upstairs and half-drugged?

  He tried not to run when he went upstairs and hurried into the dark room, only to find another false alarm. She was no more dead or hurt than he was: breathing quietly and regularly in sleep. Yet this time he took no chances. He locked the door to the bathroom, saw that the windows were locked, and, when he went out into the hall again, locked the door on the outside and kept the key.

  These continued false alarms were worse than a real happening. Yet he had seen Pennik - or hadn't he? Suddenly he knew that he was not sure. It had been no more than a flash across the tail of the eye, an image conjured out of his own imagination, or (he boggled at the thought) a projected image. But the open window? He might have left that open himself; now that he reflected, he was almost sure he had.

 

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