He Who Whispers

“Oh, ah? The same little red-and-gold bottle that's on the bedside table now?”

I—I suppose so.” There was that infernal smile again, curling. “Anyway, she put it on the bedside table by the lamp. She was sitting in a chair there.”

“And them?”

“It wasn't much, but she seemed awfully pleased. She gave me nearly a quarter of a pound of chocolates loose in a box. I have them downstairs in my room now.”

“And then?”

“I—I don't know what you want me to say, really. We talked. I was restless. I walked up and down . . .”

(Images crowded back into Miles Hammond's mind. As he himself had left the library, hours ago, he remembered glancing up and seeing a woman's shadow pass across the light, lonely against the screen of the New Forest.)

“Marion asked me why I was restless, and I said I didn't know. Mostly she did the talking, about her fiance and her brother and her plans for the future. The lamp was on the bedside table; did I tell you? And the bottle of perfume. All of a sudden, about midnight it was, she broke off and said there!--it was time we were both turning in and getting some sleep, so I wen downstairs to bed. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.”

“Miss Hammond didn't seem nervous or alarmed about anything?”

“Oh, no!”

Dr. Fell grunted. Dropping the dead pipe into his pocket, he deliberately removed his eyeglasses and held them a few feet away from his eyes, studying them with screwed-up face like a painter, though in that light he could scarcely have seen them at all. His wheezings and snortings, a sign of deep meditation, grew even louder.

“You know of course, that Miss Hammond was nearly frightened to death?”

“Yes. It must have been dreadful.”

“Have you any theory, then,” pursued Dr. Fell in exactly the same tone of voice, “to account for the equally mysterious death of Howard Brooke on Henri Quatre's tower nearly six years ago?”

Without gibing her time for a reply, still holding up the eyeglasses and appearing to scrutinize them with intense concentration, Dr. Fell added in an offhand tone:

“Some people, Miss Seton, are very curious correspondents. They will pour out in letters to people far away what they wouldn't dream of telling someone in the same town. You have—harrumph—perhaps noticed it?”

To Miles Hammond it seemed that the whole atmosphere of this interview had subtly changed. For Dr. Fell spoke again.

“Are you a good swimmer, Miss Seton?”

Pause.

“Fairly good. I daren't do much of it because of my heart.”

“But I should hazard a guess, ma'am, that if necessary you do not object to swimming under water?”

And now a wind came whispering and rustling, sinuously, through the forest; and Miles knew the atmosphere had changed. Not subtly, but on Fay Seton's part charged with emotion, perhaps deadly. It was the same silent outburst he had sensed and felt a while ago, in the kitchen, over boiling water. It engulfed the hall in an invisible tide. Fay knew. Dr. Fell knew. Fay's lips were drawn back from her teeth, and the teeth glittered.

It was then, as Fay took a blundering step backwards to get away from Dr. Fell, that the door to Marion's bedroom opened.

The opening of the door poured yellow light into the hall. Georges Antoine Rigaud, in his shirt-sleeves, regarded them in a state of near-raving.

“I tell you,” he cried out, “I cannot keep this woman's heart beating much longer. Where is that doctor? Why does not that doctor arrive? What is delaying . . .”

Professor Rigaud checked himself.

Past his shoulder, past a wide-open door, Miles by moving a little could see into the bedroom. He could see Marion, his own sister Marion, lying on a still more tumbled bed. The .32 revolver, useless against certain intruders, had slipped off the bed onto the floor. Marion's black hair was spread out on the pillow. Her arms were thrown wide, on sleeve pushed up where a hypodermic injection had been made in the arm. She had the aspect of a sacrifice.

In that moment, by a single gesture, terror rushed on them out of the New Forest.

For Professor Rigaud saw Fay Seton's face. And Georges Antoine Rigaud—Master of Arts, man of the world, tolerant watcher of human foibles—instinctively flung up his hand in the sign against the evil eye.

Chapter XII

Miles Hammond dreamed a dream.

Instead of being asleep at Greywood, on that Saturday night passing into Sunday morning—which was actually the ease—he dreamed that he was downstairs in the sitting-room, at night under a good lamp, seated in any easy-chair and taking notes from a large book.

The passage:

“In Slavonic lands popular folklore credits the vampire with existence merely as an animated corpse: that is, a being confined to its coffin by day, and emerging only after nightfall for its prey. In Western Europe, notably in France, the vampire is a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but capable during sleep or trance of projecting its soul in the form of straw or spinning mist to take visible bodily shape.”

Miles nodded as he underscored it.

“'Creberrima fama est mulique se expertos uel ab eis,' to quote a possible explanation of the origin of these latter, 'qui experto exxent, de quorum fie dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Sluanos et Panes, quos uulog incubos uocant, improbos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earun adpetisse ac ergisse concubitum, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur.'”

“I shall have to translate this,” Miles aid to himself in his dream. “I wonder if there's a Latin dictionary in the library.”

So he went into the library in search of a Latin dictionary. But he knew all along who would be waiting there.

During his work at Regency history Miles had for a long time been captivated by the character of Lady Pamela Hoyt, a sprightly court beauty of a hundred and forty years gone by, no better than she should be, and perhaps a murderess. In his dream he knew that in the library he would meet Lady Pamela Hoyt.

There was as yet no sense of fear. The library looked just as usual, with its dusty uneven piles of books round the floor. On one pile of books sat Pamela Hoyt, in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a high-waisted Regency gown of sprigged muslin. Across from her sat Fay Seton. Each one looked just as real as the other; he was conscious of nothing unusual.

“I wonder if you could tell me,” Miles said in his dream, “whether my uncle keeps a Latin dictionary here?”

He heard their reply soundlessly, if it can be expressed like that.

“I really don't think he does,” replied Lady Pamela politely, and Fay Seton shook her head too. “But you could go upstairs and ask him.”

There was a flash of lightning outside the windows. Suddenly Miles felt an intense reluctance to go upstairs and ask his uncle about a Latin dictionary. Even in the dream he knew his Uncle Charles was dead, of course; but that wasn't the reason for his reluctance. Th reluctance grew into terror, solidifying coldly through his veins. He wouldn't go! He couldn't go! Bu something impelled him to go. And all the time Pamela Hoyt an Fay Seton, with enormous eyes, sat perfectly motionless like wax dummies. There was a shaking crash of thunder . . .

Miles, with bright sunlight in his face, was shocked awake.

He sat up, feeling the arms of the chair on either side o him.

He was in the sitting-room downstairs, hunched up in the tapestry char by the fireplace. In a momentary backwash of the dream, wildly, he half expected to see Fay and dead Pamela Hoyt walk out of the library door over there behind him.