He Who Whispers

floor.

Picking up his pipe from the table, he twisted at it and thrust it bowl-upwards into his breast-pocket.

“What can't understand,” he complained, “is how all this came about. Do they keep murderers at the Murder Club, or what? All right, Miles! Don't get on your high horse! I like to get my facts in order, that's all. How long will it take Miss What-is-it to put the books in order? A week or so?”

Miles grinned at him.

“Properly to catalogue that library, Steve, with all the cross-referencing of the old books, will take between two and three months.”

Even Marion looked startled.

“Well,” murmured Stephen, after a pause. “Miles will always do exactly what he wants to do. So that's all right. But I can't go back to Greywood with you this evening ...”

“You can't go back this evening?” cried Marion.

“My darling,” sad Steve, “I kept trying to tell you in the taxi?only you haven't the gift of worshipful silence?that there's a crisis on again at the office. It's only until tomorrow morning.” He hesitated. “I suppose it's all right to send you two down there alone with this interesting female?”

There was a brief silence.

Then Marion chortled with mirth.

“Steve! You are an idiot!”

“Am I? Yes. I suppose I am.”

“What can Fay Seton do to us?”

“Not being acquainted with the lady, I can't say. Nothing, actually.” Stephen smoothed at his cropped moustache. “It's only?

“Drink up your tea, Steve, and don't be so old-fashioned. I shall be glad of her help about the house. When Miles said he was going to employ a librarian I rather imagined an old man with a long white beard. What's more, I shall put her in my room, and that will give me an excuse to move into that glorious ground-floor room even if it does still smell of paint. It's tiresome about the Ministry of Information; but I don't think the woman will frighten us to death in one night even if you're not there. What train are you taking tomorrow morning?”

“Nine-thirty. And mind you don't mess around with that kitchen boiler unless I'm there to help. Let it alone, do you hear?”

“I'm a dutiful bride-to-be, Steve.”

“Dutiful my foot,” said Stephen, without stress or resentment; he simply stated a fact. At the same time, obviously soothed and shaken back to normal by this time, he dismissed the subject of Fay Seton. “By George, Miles, you must have me to a meeting of this Murder Club! What do they do there?”

“It's a dinner club.”

“You mean you pretend the salt is poison? That sort of thing? And score a point if you can shove it into somebody's coffee without being detected? All right, old man: don't be offended! I must be pushing off now.”

“Steve!” Marion spoke in a voice whose inflection her brother knew only too well. “I forgot something. May I have a word with you? You will excuse us for a moment, Miles!”

Talking about him, eh?

Miles glowered at the table, trying to pretend he was unconscious of this, as Marion moved with Stephen towards the door. Marion was speaking in an animated undertone, Stephen shrugging his shoulders and smiling as he put on his hat. Miles took a drink of tea that had begun to grow cold.

He had an uncomfortable suspicion that he was somehow making a fool of himself, certainly that he was losing his sense of humour. But why? The true answer to that occurred to him a moment later. It was because he wondered whether he might not be loosing in his own household certain forces over which he had no control.

A cash-register rang: outside the windows rose the chug of a train; the burring voice of the loud-speaker recalled him to Waterloo Station. Miles told himself that this fleeting idea?the momentary intense chill which touched his heart?was all nonsense. He repeated it, summoning up a laugh, and felt his spirits improved when Marion returned.

“Sorry if I sounded bad-tempered, Marion.”

“My dear boy!” She dismissed this with a gesture. Then she eyed him persuasively. “But now that we're alone, Miles, tell you little sister all about it.”

“There isn't anything to tell! I met this girl, I liked her manners, I was convinced she'd been slandered....”

“But you didn't tell her you knew anything about her?”

“Not a word. She didn't mention t, either.”

“She gave you references, of course?”

“I didn't ask for them. Why should you be so interested?”

“Miles, Miles!” Marion shook her head. “Practically every woman falls for that sauntering Charles-the-Second air of yours, the more so as you're superbly unconscious of it yourself. Now don't draw yourself up and look stuffy! You hate it when I take any interest in you welfare!”

“I only meant that these constant sisterly character analyses?

“And when I hear of a woman who seems to have impressed you so much, naturally I'm interested!” Marion's eyes remained steady. “What was the trouble she was mixed up in?”

Mile's gaze wandered out of the window.

“Six years ago she went over to Chartres as private secretary to a wealthy leather manufacturer named Brooke. She became engaged to be married to the son of the house....”

“Oh.”

“... a young neurotic name Harry Brooke. Afterwards there was a row of some kind.” Inwardly Miles choked over the words. He couldn't, physically couldn't, tell Marion about Howard Brooke's determination to buy of this girl.

“What kind of a row, Miles?”

“Nobody knows; or at least I don't. One afternoon the father climbed up to the top of a tower that's a landmark in the district, and ...” Miles broke off. “By the way, you won't mention any of this to Miss Seton? You won't gibe her any intimation you know?”

“Do you think I could be so tactless, Miles?”

“It was a wild, rainy, thundery day over the tower, like a scene in a German ghost-story. Mr. Brooke was found stabbed through the back with his own sword-stick. But that's the amazing part of the whole business, Marion. The evidence showed he must have been alone when he died. Nobody cam near him or could have come near him. It almost seemed that the murder, it it was murder, must have been committed by someone who could rise up unsupported in the air....”

Again he paused. For Marion was contemplating him in a strange, wide-eyed, searching way, bursting and balanced on the edge of laughter.

“Miles Hammond!” she cried. “Who's been stuffing you full of this awful rubbish?”

“I am simply,” he said through his teeth, “stating the facts of the official police investigation.”

“All right, dear. But who told you?”

“Professor Rigaud of Edinburgh University. A distinguished man in the academic world. You must have come across his Life of Cagliostro?”

“No. Who's Cagliostro?”

(Why is it?Miles had often pondered the question?that in debates with you own family you are inclined to lose your temper over questions which from an outsider would be greeted with mildness, even amusement?)

“Count Cagliostro, Marion, was a famous wizard and charlatan o the eighteenth century. Professor Rigaud takes the line that Cagliostro, though he was a thundering fraud in most respects, really did possess certain psychic powers which ...”

For the third time he checked himself. Marion was whooping. And, hearing what his own voice must sound like, Miles had enough sense of proportion left to agree that possibly he might have made a better choice of