He Who Whispers

and don't go wandering away into the forest with all the doors wide open. Good night!”

And the door closed after her.

For a little while after she had gone, turning over unruly thoughts, Miles stood motionless. In a mechanical way he picked up and replaced the books he had knocked over.

What had these women got against Fay Seton, anyway? Last night, for instance, Barbara Morell had practically warned him against Fay—or had she? There was a good deal in Barbara's behaviour he could not fit into any pattern. He could only be sure that she was emotionally upset. Fay, on the other hand, had denied knowing Barbara Morell; though Fay had mentioned, with a sharp hinting insistence, some man of the same surname . . .

“Jim Morell.” That was it.

Damn it all!

Miles Hammond swung himself up again to st on the window-ledge. Glancing behind at the darkling shape of the New Forest pressing up to within twenty yards of the house, he saw its darkness and breathed its fragrance as a balm for fever. And so, pushing one of the swinging lights wider open, he slid through and jumped down outside.

To breathe this dew-scented dimness was like a weight off the lungs. He climbed up the little grass slope of the terrace to the open space between here and the line of the forest. A few feet below him now lay the long narrow side of the house; he could see into the library, into the dark dining-room, into the sitting-room with ts low-glimmering lamp, then the dark reception hall. Most of the other rooms at Greywood were bedrooms, chiefly unused and in a bad state of repair.

He glanced upwards and to his left. Marion's bedroom was at the rear of the house, over the library. The bedroom windows on the side facing him—eastwards—were covered with curtains. But its rear windows, looking south towards another loom of the encircling woods, threw out dim yellow light the edge of whose reflection he could see as it touched the trees. Though Miles was out of sight of these rear windows, that yellow light lay plain enough at the corner of his eye. And, as he watched, a woman's shadow slowly passed across it.

Marion herself? Or Fay Seton talking to her before she retired?

It was all right!

Muttering to himself, Miles swung round and walked northwards towards the front of the house. It was a bit chilly; he might at least have brought a raincoat. But the singing silence, the hint of moonrise beginning to make a white dawn behind the trees, at once soothed and exalted him.

He walked down to the open space in front of Greywood. Just before him lay the stream spanned by the rustic bridge. Miles went out on the bridge, leaned against its railing, and stood listening to the little whispering noises of the water at night. He might have stood there for twenty minutes, lost in thoughts where a certain face kept obtruding, when the jarring bump of a motor-car roused him.

The car, approaching unseen through the trees in the direction of the main road, jolted to a stop on gravel. Two men got out of it, one of them carrying an electric torch. As they piled up on foot towards the rustic bridge, Miles could see in outline tat one of them was short and stoutish, bouncing along with quick little inward-turning steps. The other was immensely tall and immensely fat, his long dark cape making him appear even more vast; he strode along with a rolling motion like an emperor, and the sound of his throat-clearing preceded him like a war- cry.

The smaller man, Miles saw, was Professor Georges Antoine Rigaud. And the immense man was Miles' friend, Dr. Gideon Fell.

He called out their names in astonishment, and both of them stopped.

Dr. Fell, absent-mindedly turning the light of the torch on his own face as he whirled it round to seek the source of the voice, stood briefly revealed as being even more ruddy of face and vacant of eye than Miles remembered him. His several chins were drawn in as though for argument. His eyeglasses on the broad black ribbon were stuck wildly askew on his nose. His big mop of grey-streaked hr seemed to quiver with argument like the bandit's moustache. So he stood peering round, huge and hatless, in every direction except the right one.

“ I'm here, Dr. Fell! On the bridge! Walk forward.”

“Oh, ah!” breathed Dr. Fell.

He came rolling forward majestically, swinging a cane, and towered over Miles as his footsteps thundered and shook on the planks of the bridge.

“Sir,” intoned Dr. Fell, adjusting his eyeglasses as he peered down like a very large djinn taking form, “good evening. You may safely trust two men of—harrumph--mature years and academic pursuits to do something utterly harebrained. I refer, of course . . .”

Again the planks of the bridge quivered.

Rigaud, like a barking little terrier, achieved the feat of worming past Dr. Fell's bulk. He stood gripping the railing of the bridge, staring at Miles with that same inextinguishable curiosity in his face.

“Professor Rigaud,” said Miles, “I owe you an apology. I meant to ring you up this morning; I honestly meant it. But I didn't know where you were staying in London, and . . .”

The other breathed quickly.

“Young man,” he replied, “you owe me no apology. No, no, no! It is I who owe you one.”

“What's that?”

“Justement!” said Professor Rigaud, nodding very rapidly. “Last night I had my merry joke. I teased and tantalized the minds of you and Mees Morell until the very last. Is it not so?”

“Yes, I suppose it is. But—”

“Even when you mentioned casually that you sought after a librarian, young man, it struck me as no more than an amusing coincidence. I never guessed, not I , that this woman was within five hundred miles of here! I never knew—never!—that the lady was in England!”

“You mean Fay Seton?”

“I do.”

Miles moistened his lips.

“But this morning,” pursued Professor Rigaud, “comes Mees Morell, who does ring up on the telephone with confused and incoherent explanations about last night. Mees Morell further tells me that she knows Fay Seton is in England, knows her address, and believes the lady may be sent to you for employment. A call to the Berkeley Hotel, tactfully made, confirms this.” He nodded over his shoulder. “You see that motor- car?”

“What about it?”

“I have borrowed it from a friend of mine, a Whitehall official, who has the petrol. I have broken the law to come and tell you. You must find some polite excuse to get this lady away from your house at once.”

White glimmered Professor Rigaud's face under the rising moon, his patch of moustache no longer comical and a desperate seriousness in his manner. Under his left arm he gripped the thick yellow sword-stick with which Howard Brooke had been stabbed. Long afterwards Miles Hammond remembered the tinkling stream, the loom of Dr. Fell's huge outline, the stout little Frenchman with his right hand holding tightly to the railing of the bridge. Now Miles took a step backwards.

“Not you too?”

Professor Rigaud's eyebrows went up.

“I do not understand.”

“Candidly, Professor Rigaud, every single person has been warning me against Fay Seton. And I'm getting damned sick and tired of it!”

“It is true, of course? You did engage the lady?”

“Yes! Why not?”

Professor Rigaud's quick eyes moved over Mile's shoulder toward the house in the background.

“Who else is here tonight besides yourself?”

“Only my sister Marion.”

“No servants? No other person?”

“Not for tonight, no. But what difference does that make? What is all this? Why shouldn't I ask Miss Seton to come here and stay as long as she likes?”