Till Death Do Us Part

man?'

Growling from deep in his throat, Dr Fell lumbered forward and approached the window as closely as the mountainous ridges of his waistcoat would allow. He adjusted his eyeglasses, bending forward as though for intense concentration. But it was no more than a few seconds before he swung round again.

'Sir,' replied Dr Fell, with the same air of subdued wrath, 'I have not the slightest idea who he is. But he is not Sir Harvey Gilman.'

CHAPTER 11

Too many shocks, numbing the emotions, produce a kind of torpor in which it is easy to pretend calmness.

‘What's the joke?' asked Dick Markham.

He: became conscious of three faces looking at him: of Earnshaw open-mouthed, of Middlesworth bitterly wry, of Dr Fell in such a genuine glory of rage that his upthrust under-lip seemed to meet the bandit's moustache.

'There's no joke,' answered Middlesworth.

Then.Dick shouted:'Not Sir Harvey Gilman?'

' He's an impostor,' Middlesworth said simply..' I couldn't tell you last night what I suspected, because I didn't want to raise false- hopes. But ..„...' Middlesworth woke up. 'Excuse me, Bill’ he said to Earnshaw, 'but won't you be-needed at the bank?'

No hint could have been plainer and yet, in Middlesworth's mild voice, containing less offence. It says much too for Earnshaw's urbanity, or his good nature, or both, that the bank-manager merely nodded.

'Yes he agreed, 'I'm late already. I shall have to excuse-myself, I'm afraid. See you later.'

And he. turned round and marched off like a man in a trance, though he must have been boiling with curiosity..

Middlesworth waited until the straight back, the Anthony Eden hat, the trim dark-blue suit had got some distance away.

'Tell him, Dr Fell,' Middlesworth suggested.

Dr Fell wheeled round, a mighty galleon, to face Dick.

'Sir,' he intoned, setting his eyeglasses more firmly, 'you have been made the victim, I can't say why, of as cruel and brutal a hoax as comes within my experience. I wish to reassure you about this Miss ... Miss ...?'

'Lesley Grant,' supplied Middlesworth.

'Oh, ah. Yes.' Dr Fell's face was fiery; his cheeks puffed out,' Miss Grant is not a poisoner. She is not, so far as I am aware, a criminal of any kind. I will itemize exactly what I mean.'

He checked off the points on his fingers.

'She never married, or murdered, or in fact had any concern with an American lawyer called Burton Foster, for the excellent reason that no such person ever existed -'

'What?'

Dr Fell waved him to silence.

' She is guiltless of poisoning the elderly Mr Davies of Liverpool in a locked room or anywhere else, because Mr Davies never existed either. She never invited Mr Martin Belford of Paris, to an engagement-celebration dinner at her house, and then sent him home to die, because he is a figment of the imagination too. In short, sir: the whole story against Miss Grant is nothing but a pack of lies from start to finish.'

If pain can be felt in a detached way, that was how Dick Markham felt the bite that seared between the first two fingers of his right hand. He woke up partly to the fact that his cigarette had burnt down against them. He stared at the cigarette, and then threw it away.

'Steady, now!' came Middlesworth's voice out of the mist.

And it was Middlesworth's homely, heartening grin which broke the spell.

'Then,' said Dick, 'who in God's name is he? I mean, who was he?'

Words alone could not express what poured through his mind. Dick Markham fell back on pantomime, like a child. He pointed to the sitting-room window, to the evil exhibits and the leering corpse beyond.

'As to who he is,' replied Dr Fell,' I can only repeat that I don't know. I never saw him before, in spite of the fact that he seems to have claimed acquaintance with me. But he was, I suspect, a good deal of a genius.'

'And why,' yelled Dick, 'did he tell that pack of lies? Why? What was his purpose?'

Dr Fell scowled.

'I refuse to imagine, you know, that the whole thing was an elaborate joke.'

'It wasn't a joke,' Middlesworth agreed dryly. 'You should have watched his face last night.'

Again Dr Fell turned to Dick, with a sort of massive and cross-eyed benevolence which had in it a note of apology.

'You see, my lad, that story of his was in its own way a minor work of art. It was directed solely and simplyat you: at every chink in your armour, every receptive part of your mental make- up.'

(True! True! True!)

'Each word was designed to get its own particular response from you. On to this young lady he grafted a psychological character in which you could believe, an irony that would strike you as right, a situation which your own imagination would compel you to accept It was the perfect picture of - ahem - a dramatist hoist with his own petard. But I'm rather surprised ...'

Dr Fell's big voice trailed off, and he frowned. Dick, to whom certain small indications were now coming back, looked at Middlesworth.

' I'd rather like to shake your hand, Doctor,' he said.

'That's all right,' said Middlesworth, embarrassed.

' You thought he was a wrong ‘un from the start?'

'We-el,' said Middlesworth, 'not exactly that'

'But your behaviour last night...'

' I shouldn't have gone so far as to say I thought he was a wrong ‘un, no. But I haven't been altogether happy about it- When Major Price first introduced, him to, me, and said Sir Harvey made, us all promise to keep his real identity a secret for a while -'

' I'll, bet he made you promise,' observed Dr Fell grimly. 'By thunder, but wouldn't 'Sir Harvey' make you promise!'

'I was interested,' said Middlesworth. 'I asked him about one of his famous cases. He answered me all right. But he made some grandiose reference to the two chambers of the heart. That brought me up a bit. Because any medical student knows the heart has four chambers. And then those stories he told last night.'

Dick spoke with a very bitter taste in his mouth.

'Did he catch me,' Dick, asked, 'with some wild absurdity in a crime story?'

Middlesworth reflected;.

'Not absurd, no. Nothing impossible. Just unlikely. Such as a pathologist being called on to act as. police surgeon in the London area.. Or, in the Liverpool story holding the inquest at St George's Hall when, the crime took place in a suburb like Prince's Park.. I'm only a. G.P.,' explained Middlesworth; apologetically, 'but - hang it all!'

He put his, empty pipe into his mouth and. drew at it.

'Anyway,' Middlesworth added hunching up his shoulders, ' I thought it might be a good idea to get in touch with Dr Fell.' His mild eye twinkled towards Dick, 'Feeling better, old son?'

Better?

How, to explajn that, he hadn't got rid of the nightmare even yet?' And that the- hypnotic eye of the alleged Sir Harvey Gilman - a much-too-hypnotic eye., he now realized - still, bored into his mind? Over the fields now reminding him, drifted; the sound of the church clock-striking-ten in the morning.

'It's just exactly twelve hours,' answered: Dick, 'since I got pitched into this nightmare. It seems like twelve days or twelve years. I've got to get used to the idea that Lesley

isn't a murderess, and that these 'murdered men' never existed. There never was any prussic-acid poisoning! There never was any locked room!' Dr Fell coughed.