He Who Whispers

taxi's going your way in any case.?Berkeley Hotel!” she called to the driver.

The door slammed just before eight American G.I.'s in three different parties, bore down simultaneously on the cab. Against the gleam of a lighted window Miles caught a glimpse of Barbara's face, smiling brightly and tensely and unconvincingly in the crowd as the taxi moved away.

Miles sat back, holding Professor Rigaud's manuscript and feeling it figuratively burn his hand.

Old Rigaud would be furious. He would demand to know, in a frenzy of Gallic logic, why this trick had been played on him. And that was not funny; that was only just and reasonable; for Miles himself had still no notion why. All of which he could be certain was that Barbara Morell's motive had been a strong one, passionately sincere.

As for Barbara's remark about Fay Seton …

“You wonder what it would be like to be in love with her.”

What infernal nonsense!

Had mystery of Howard Brooke's death ever been solved, by the police or by Rigaud or by anyone else? Had they learned who committed the murder, and how it was done? Evidently not, from the tenor of the professor's remarks. He had said h knew what was “wrong” with Fay Seton. But he had also said?though in queer, elusive terms?that he did not believe she was guilty. Every statement concerning the murder, through all that tortuous story, rang the clear indication that there had been no solution.

Therefore all this manuscript could tell him .. Miles glanced at it in the semi-darkness … would be the routine facts of the police investigation. It might tell him some sordid facts about the character of a pleasant-faced woman with red hair and blue eyes. But no more.

In an utter revulsion of feeling Miles hated the whole thing. He wanted peace and quiet. He wanted to be free from these clinging strands. With a sudden impulse, before he should think better of it, he leaned forward and tapped the glass panel.

“Driver! Have you got enough petrol to take me back to Beltring's Restaurant, and then on to the Berkeley? ?Double fare if you do!”

The silhouette of the driver's back contorted with angry indecision; but the cab slowed down, slurred, and circled Eros's island back into Shaftesbury Avenue.

Miles was inspired by his new resolution. After all, he had been gone from Beltring's only a comparatively few minutes. What he proposed doing now was the only sensible thing to do. His resolution blazed brightly inside him when he jumped out of the taxi in Romilly Street, hurried round the corner to the side entrance, and up the stairs.

In the upstairs hall he found a dispirited-looking waiter occupied with the business of closing up.

“Is Professor Rigaud still her? A short stoutish French gentleman with a patch of moustache something like Hitler's, carrying a yellow cane?”

The waiter looked at him curiously.

“He is downstairs in the bar, monsieur. He ...”

“Give him this, will you?” requested Miles, and put the still-folded manuscript into the waiter's hand. “Tell him it was taken by mistake. Thank you.”

And he strode out again.

On the way home, lighting his pipe and inhaling the soothing smoke, Miles was conscious of a sensation of exhilaration and buoyancy. Tomorrow afternoon, when he had attended to the real business which brought him to London, he would meet Marion and Steve at the station. He would return to the country, to the secluded house in the New Forest where they had been established for only a fortnight, as a man plunges into cool water on a hot day.

That was disposed of, cut off at the root, before it could really trouble his mind. Whatever secret appertained to a phantom image called Fay Seton, it was no concern of his.

To claim his attention there would be his uncle's library, that alluring place hardly as yet explored during the confusion of moving in and settling down. By this time tomorrow night he would be at Greywood, among the ancient oaks and beeches of the New Forest, beside the little stream where rainbow trout rose at dusk when you flicked bits of bread on the water. Miles felt, in some extraordinary way, that he had got out of a snare.

His taxi dropped him at the Piccadilly entrance to the Berkeley: he paid the driver in an expansive mood. Seeing that the lounge inside was still pretty well filled at its little round tables, Miles, with his passionate hatred of crowds, deliberately walked round to the Berkeley Street entrance so that he might breathe solitude a little longer. The rain way clearing away. A freshness tinged the air. Miles pushed through the revolving doors into the little foyer, with the reception desk on his right.

He got his key at the desk, and stood debating the advisability of a final pipe and whisky-and-soda before turning in, when the night reception clerk hurried out of the cubicle with a slip of paper in his hand.

“Mr. Hammond!”

“Yes?”

The clerk scrutinized the slip of paper, trying to read his own handwriting.

“There's a message for you, sir. I think you applied to the?to this employment agency for a librarian to do cataloguing work?”

“I did,” said Miles. “And they promised to send an applicant round this evening. The applicant didn't turn up, which made me very late for a dinner I was attending.”

“The applicant did turn up, sir, eventually. The lady says she's very sorry, but it was unavoidable. She says things are very difficult, since she's only just been repatriated from France...”

“Repatriated from France?”

“Yes, sir.”

The hands of the gilt clock on the grey-green wall pointed to twenty-five minutes past eleven. Miles Hammond stood very still, and stopped twirling the key in his hand.

“Did the lady leave her name?”

“Yes, sir. Miss Fay Seton.”

Chapter VI

On the following afternoon, Saturday, the second of June, Miles reached Waterloo Station at four o'clock.

Waterloo, its curving acre of iron-girdered roof still darkened over except where a few patches of glass remained after the shake of bombs, had got over most of the Saturday rush to Bournemouth. But it still rang with a woman's spirited voice over a loud-speaker, telling people what queues to join. (If this voice ever begins to say something you want to hear, it is instantly drowned out by a hiss of steam or the thudding chest-notes of an engine.) Streams of travellers, mainly in khaki against civilian drabness, wound back among the benches behind the bookstall and, to the lady like annoyance of the loud-speaker, got mixed up in each other's queues.

Miles Hammond was not amused. As he put down his suitcase and waited under the clock, he was almost blind to everything about him.

What the devil, he said to himself, had he done?

What would Marion say? What would Steve say?

Yet if anybody on this earth represented sanity, it was his sister and her fiance. He was heartened to see them a few minutes later, Marion laden with parcels and Steve with a pipe in his mouth.

Marion Hammond, six or seven years younger than Miles, was a sturdy, nice-looking girl with black hair like her brother, but a practicality that he perhaps lacked. She was very fond of Miles an tirelessly humoured him; because she really did believe, though she never said so, that he was not mentally grown up. She was proud, of course, of a brother who could write such learned books, though Marion confessed sh didn't understand such things herself: the point was that books had no relation to serious affairs in life.

And, as Miles sometimes had to admit to himself, perhaps she was right.

So she came hurrying along under the echoing roof of Waterloo, well dressed even in this year because of new tricks with old clothes, her hazel eyes at ease with life under their dark straight brows, and intrigued?even pleased?by a new vagary of Mile's nature.

“Honestly, Miles!” said his sister. “Look at the clock! It's only a few minutes past four!”

“I know that.”

“But the train doesn't go until half-past five, dear. Even if we've got to be here