beg of you, mademoiselle, that you will not disturb yourself! Or you, either, my friend: I will get the waiter.”
The double-doors to the outer room closed behind him again whisking the candle-flames. As Miles got up automatically to anticipate him. Barbara stretched out her hand and touched his arm. Her eyes, those friendly sympathetic grey eyes under the smooth forehead and the wings of ash-blonde hair, said silently but very clearly that she wanted to ask him a question in private.
Miles sat down again.
“Yes, Miss Morell?”
She withdrew her hand quickly. “I … I don't know how to begin, really.”
“Then suppose I begin?” said Miles, with that tolerant and crooked smiled which so much inspired confidence.
“How do you mean?”
“I don't want to pry into anything, Miss Morell. This is entirely between ourselves. But it has struck me, once or twice tonight, that you're far more interested in the specific case of Fay Seton than you are in the Murder Club.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Isn't it true? Professor Rigaud's noticed it too.”
“Yes. It's true.” She spoke after a hesitation, nodding vigorously and then turning her head away. “That's why I owe you an explanation. And I want to give you an explanation. But before I do”?she turned back to face him?may I ask you a horribly impertinent question?
“Of course. What do you want to know?”
Barbara tapped the photograph of Fay Seton, lying between them beside the folded sheaf of manuscript.
“You're fascinated by that, aren't you?” she asked.
“Well?yes. I suppose I am.”
“You wonder,” said Barbara, “what it would be like to be in love with her.”
If her first remark had been a trifle disconcerting, the second took him completely aback.
“Are you setting up as a mind-reader, Miss Morell?”
“I'm sorry! But isn't it true?”
“No! Wait! Hold on! That's going a bit too far!”
the photograph had been having a hypnotic effect, he could not in honesty deny it. But that was curiosity, the lure of a puzzle. Miles had always been rather amused by those stories, usually romantic stories with a tragic ending, in which some poor devil falls in love with a woman's picture. Such things had actually happened in real life, of course; but it failed to lessen his disbelief. And, in any case, the question didn't arise here.
He could have laughed at Barbara for her seriousness.
“Anyway,” he countered, “why do you ask that?”
“Because of something you said earlier this evening. Please don't try to remember what it was!” Humour, a wryness about the mouth to contradict the smile in her eyes, showed in Barbara's face. “I'm probably only tired, and imagining things. Forget I said it! Only ...”
“You see, Miss Morell, I'm a historian.”
“Oh?” Her manner was quickly sympathetic.
Miles felt rather sheepish. “That's a highfalutin way of putting it, I'm afraid. But it does happen to be true, in however small a way. My work, the world I live in, is made up of people I never knew. Trying to visualize, trying to understand, a lot of men and women who were only heaps of dust before I was born. As for this Fay Seton ...”
“She is wonderfully attractive, isn't she?” Barbara indicated the photograph.
“Is she?” Miles said coolly. “It's not a bad piece of work, certainly. Coloured photographs are usually an abomination. Anyway,” fiercely he groped back to the subject, “this woman is no more real than Agnes Sorel or?or Pamela Hoyt. We don't know anything about her.” He paused, startled. “Come to think of it, we haven't even heard whether she's still alive.”
“No,” the girl agreed slowly. “No, we haven't even heard that.”
Barbara got up slowly, brushing her knuckles across the table as though throwing something away. She drew a deep breath.
“I can only ask you again,” she said, “please to forget everything I've just said. It was only a silly idea of mine; it couldn't possibly come to anything. What a queer evening this has been! Professor Rigaud does rather cast a spell, doesn't he? And, as far as that's concerned” – she spoke suddenly, twitching her head round – ”isn't Professor Rigaud being a long time in finding a waiter?”
“Professor Rigaud!” called Miles. He lifted up his voice powerfully,
Again, as when the absent one had himself called for a waiter, only the rain gurgled and splashed in the darkness. There was no reply.
Chapter V
Miles rose to his feet and went over to the double-doors.
He threw them open, and looked in an outer room sombre and deserted. Bottles and glasses had been removed from the improvised bar; only one electric light was burning.
“A queer evening,” Miles declared, “is absolutely right. First the whole Murder Club disappears. Professor Rigaud tells us an incredible story,” Miles shook his head as though to clear it, “which grows even more incredible when you have time to think. The he disappears Common sense suggests he's only gone to – never mind. But at the same time ...”
The mahogany door to the hall opened. Frederic, the head-waiter, his round-jawed face aloof with reproach, slipped in.
“Professor Rigaud, sir,” he announced, “is downstairs. At the telephone.”
Barbara, who had stopped only long enough, apparently, to pick up her handbag and blow out one candle which was fluttering and flaring in a harsh gush of wax-smoke, had followed Miles into the outer room. Again she stopped short.
“At the telephone?” Barbara repeated.
“Yes, miss.”
“But” – the words sounded almost comic as she flung them out – “he was looking for someone to serve us drinks!”
“Yes, miss. The call came through while he was downstairs.”
“From whom?”
“I believe, miss, from Dr. Gideon Fell.” Slight pause. “The Honorary Secretary of the Murder Club.” Slight pause. “Dr. Fell learned Professor Rigaud had been ringing up from here earlier in the evening; so Dr. Fell rang back.” Was there a dangerous quality, now, about Frederic's eye? “Professor Rigaud seems very angry, miss.”
“Oh, good Lord!” breathed Barbara in a voice of honest consternation.
Over the back of one of the pink brocaded chairs, chairs ranged as stiffly round the room as in an undertaker's parlour, hung the girl's fur wrap and an umbrella. Assuming an air of elaborate unconcern which would have deceived nobody, Barbara picked them up and twisted the wrap round her shoulders.
“I'm awfully sorry,” she said to Miles. “I shall have to go now.”
He stared at her.
“But, look here! You can't go now! Won't the old boy be annoyed if he comes back and finds you're not here?”
“No half as annoyed,” Barbara said with conviction, “as if he comes back and finds I am here.” She fumbled at her handbag. “– I want to pay for my share of the dinner. It's been very nice. I–“ Confusion, utter and complete, overcame her down to the finger-tips. Her handbag overflowed, spilling coins and keys and a compact on the floor.
Miles restrained an impulse to laugh, though certainly not at her. A great dazzle of illumination came into his mind. He bent down, picked up the fallen articles, dropped them into her handbag, and closed it with a snap.
