He Who Whispers

“How do you mean, no?”

“I mean,” returned Professor Rigaud, “it is an argument I often have with my academic colleagues about the word 'superstitious.' Can you dispute the facts I present?”

“Apparently not.”

“Justement! And supposing—I say supposing!—any such creature as a vampire to exist, do you agree that it may explain Fay Seton's every action while she lived with the Brooke family?”

“But look here—!”

“I say to you,” Professor Rigaud's little eye gleamed in a sort of logical frenzy, “I say to you: 'Here are certain facts; please to explain them.' Facts, facts, facts! You reply to me that you cannot explain them, but that I must not—must not, must not!—talk such superstitious nonsense, because the thing I suggest upsets your universe and makes you afraid. You may be right in saying so. You may be wrong in saying so. But it is I who am practical and you who are superstitious.”

He peered round at Dr. Fell.

“You agree, dear doctor?”

Dr. Fell had been standing over against the low line of the white-painted bookshelves, his arms folded under his long box-pleated cape, and his eyes fixed with absent-minded absorption on the dim flame of the lamp. Miles was assured of his presence by a gentle wheezing of breath, with occasional snorts an stoppages as though the doctor had suddenly walked out of a half-dream, and by the flutter of the broad black eyeglass-ribbon when his chest rose and fell.

His face, as ruddy as a furnace, radiated that sort of geniality which as a rule made him tower in heartening comfort like Old King Cole. Gideon Fell, Miles knew, was an utterly kindhearted, utterly honest, completely absent-minded and scatter-brained man whose best hits occurred half through absent-mindedness. His face at the moment, with the under-0lip drawn up and the bandit's moustache drawn down, appeared something of a study in ferocity.

“You agree, dear doctor?” persisted Rigaud.

“Sir—” began Dr. Fell, rearing up with a powerful oratorical flourish like Dr. Johnson. Then he seemed to change his mind; he subsided and scratched his nose.

“Monsieur?” prompted Rigaud with the same formality.

“I do not deny,” said Dr. Fell, sweeping out one arm in a gesture which gravely endangered a bronze statuette on the bookshelves, “I do not deny that supernatural forces may exist in this world. In fact, I firmly believe they do exist.”

“Vampires!” sad Miles Hammond.

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Fell, with a seriousness which made Miles' heart sink. “Perhaps even vampires.”

Dr. Fell's own crutch-handled stick was propped against the bookshelves. But he was now looking, with even more witless vacancy, at the thick yellow sword-cane still clutched under Professor Rigaud's arm.

Wheezing as he lumbered forward, Dr. Fell took the can from Rigaud. He turned it over in his fingers. Holding it in the same absent-minded fashion, he wandered over and sat down—very untidily—in a big tapestry chair by the empty fireplace. The whole room shook as he sat down, though this was a solidly constructed house.

“But I believe,” he pursued, “like any honest psychical researcher, in first of all examining the facts.”

“Monsieur,” cried Professor Rigaud, “I give you facts!”

“Sir,” replied Dr. Fell, “no doubt.”

Scowling, he blinked at the sword-cane. He slowly unscrewed the blade-handle, removed it from the scabbard, and studied it. He held the threads of the handle close to his lopsided eyeglasses, and tried to peer into the scabbard. When the learned doctor spoke again, rousing himself, it was in a voice like a schoolboy.

“I say! Has anybody got a magnifying-glass?”

“There's one here in the house,” answered Miles, who was trying to adjust his mind to this. “But I can't seem to remember where I saw it last. Would you like me to . . .?”

“Candidly speaking,” said Dr. Fell, with an are of guilty frankness, “I'm not sure it would be much good to me. But it makes an impressive picture, and gives the user a magnificent sense of self-importance. Harrumph.” His voice changed. “I think someone said there were bloodstains inside this scabbard?”

Professor Rigaud was almost at the point of jumping up and down on the floor.

“There are bloodstains inside it! I said so last night to Miss Morell and Mr. Hammond. I sad so again to you this morning.” His voice grew challenging: “And then?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Fell, nodding in a slow and lion-like way, “that is still another point.”

Fumbling into his inside coat pocket under the big cape, Dr. Fell drew out a folded sheaf of manuscript. Miles had no difficulty in recognizing it. It was Professor Rigaud's account of the Brooke case, written for the archives of the Murder Club and restored by Miles himself after it had been taken away by Barbara Morell. Dr. Fell weighed it in his hand.

“When Rigaud brought me this manuscript today,” he said in a tone of real reverence, “I read it with a pop- eyed fascination beyond words. O Lord! O Bacchus! This is one for the club! But it does rather prompt a strong question.” His eyes fixed on Miles. “Who is Barbara Morell, and why does she upset the dinner of the Murder Club?”

“Ah!” breathed Professor Rigaud, nodding very rapidly and rubbing his hands together, “That also interests me very much! Who is Barbara Morell?”

Miles stared back at them.

“Hang it, don't look at me! I don't know!”

Professor Rigaud's eyebrows went up. “Yet one remembers that you accompanied her home?”

“Only as far as the Underground station, that's all.”

“You did not, perhaps, discuss this matter?”

“No. That is—no.”

The stout little Frenchman had a very disconcerting eye.

“Last night,” Professor Rigaud said to Dr. Fell, after a long scrutiny of Miles, “this little Mees Morell is several times very much upset. Yes! The one obvious thing is that she is much concerned about Fay Seton, and undoubtedly knows her very well.

“On the contrary,” said Miles. “Miss Seton denies ever having met Barbara Morell, or knowing anything about her.”

It was as though you had struck a gong for silence. Professor Rigaud's expression was almost ghoulish.

“She told you this?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tonight, in the library, when I—asked her about things.”

“So!” breathed Professor Rigaud, with an are of refreshed interest. “You, among her victims”—the word struck Miles like a blow in the face— “you, among her victims, at least have courage! You introduced the subject and questioned her about it?”

“I didn't exactly introduce the subject, no.”

“She volunteered the information?”

“Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”

“Sir,” said Dr. Fell, sitting back in the chair with the manuscript and sword-cane across his knees and a very curious expression on his face, “it would help me enormously—by thunder, how it would help me!—if you told me here, at this moment (forgive me) without prejudice and without editing.”

It must, Miles thought, be growing very late. Such an intensity of stillness held the house that he imagined he could hear a clock strike far back in the kitchen. Marion would be fast asleep, up there over the library; Fay Seton would be fast asleep downstairs. Through the windows moonlight strengthened with deathly pallor, dimming the mere spark of the lamp and rearing on the opposite wall shadow-images of the little oblong panes.

Miles began to speak out of a dry throat, slowly and carefully. Only once did Dr. Fell interrupt with questions.

“'Jim Morell!'” the doctor repeated, so sharply that Professor Rigaud jumped. “A great friend of Harry Brooke, to whom Harry regularly wrote once a week.” He turned his big head towards Rigaud. “Were you