He Who Whispers

outside now.” Dr. Garvice turned towards the door. “It's very disturbing, though,” he added. “I'll look in again when I've seen the patient. And I'd better look in on the other lady too—Miss Seton, isn't it? She didn't seem, last night, to have as much blood-colour in her as she should have. Excuse me.”

And the door closed after him.

Chapter XIII

“I suppose,” Miles remarked mechanically, “I'd better go and see about breakfast for all of us.” But he took only two steps toward the dining-room. “Whispering!” he said. “Dr. Fell, what is the answer to all this?”

“Sir,” returned Dr. Fell, “I don't know.”

“Does it give you a clue of any kind?”

“Unfortunately, no. The vampire—”

“Need we use that word?”

“The vampire, in folk-lore, whispered softly to her victim at the beginning of the influence that threw the victim into a trance. But the point is that no vampire, real or faked, no sort of imitation bogy at all, would have had the least effect on your sister. That is correct?”

“I'd swear to it. Last night I gave you an instance to prove it. For Marion”--he tried to find the right words--”such things just didn't enter her mind.”

“You'd call her completely unimaginative?”

“That's a strong word to use about anybody. But certainly she's completely contemptuous of that. When I tried to talk to her about the supernatural, she made me sound foolish even to myself. And when I talked about Count Cagliostro . . .”

“Cagliostro?” Dr. Fell blinked at him. “Apropos of what? Oh, ah! I see! Rigaud's book?”

“Yes. According to Fay Seton, Marion seems to have got a quite sincere if hazy idea that Cagliostro was a personal friend of mine.”

Dr. Fell's scatterbrain had been set off again. He leaned back in the chair, his pipe gone out, and dreamily contemplated a corner of the ceiling for so long a time that Miles thought he must be a victim of catalepsy until Miles saw the far-away twinkle which began in the doctor's eyes, the vast sleepy beam which overspread his face, the series of chuckles which gradually ran up the ridges of his waistcoat.

“It's a fascinating subject, you know,” mused Dr. Fell.

“Vampires?” said Miles bitterly.

“Cagliostro,” replied Dr. Fell.

He gestured with the pipe.

“Now there is a historical character,” he continued, “whom I have always detested and yet obscurely admired. The tubby little Italian, the eye-roller, 'Count Front-of-Brass,' who claimed to be two thousand years old from drinking his own elixir of life! The wizard, the alchemist, the healer! Moving across the screen of the late eighteenth century in a red waistcoat covered with diamonds! Aweing kings' courts from Paris to St. Petersburg! Founding his cult of Egyptian Masonry, to which women were admitted, and addressing his female disciples with everybody in puris natuarlibus! Making gold! Prophesying the future! And, incredibly, getting away with it!

“The man was never exposed, you remember. His ruin came about through the business of Marie Antoinette's diamond necklace, in which the count had no concern whatever.

“But I think his most intriguing exploit was his Banquet of the Dead, at the mysterious house in the rue St. Claude, where the ghosts of six great men were gravely summoned from the shadows to sit down at dinner with six living guests.

“'At first,' writes one biographer, 'conversation did not flow freely.' This seems to me one of the classic understatements. My own conversation would have dried up, would positively have petrified, if I found myself at a dinner-table requesting Voltaire to pass the salt or asking the Duc de Choiseul how he liked the quality of the spam. And at this dinner the ghosts themselves seem to have been rather embarrassed as well, to judge by the quality of their talk.

“No, sir. Let me repeat that I don't like Count Cagliostro; I dislike his swagger as I dislike any man's swagger. But I will concede that he had a notion of doing things handsomely. England too, that home of quacks and imposters, has a great claim on him.”

Miles Hammond, professionally interested in spite of himself, interjected a protest.

“England?” Miles repeated. “Did you say England?”

“I did.”

“If I remember correctly, Cagliostro dis visit London on two occasions. They were very unfortunate occasions for him . . .”

“Ah!” agreed Dr. Fell. “But it was in London that he was initiated into the secret society which gave him the idea for his own secret society later. The present-day Magic Circle ought to go round to Gerrard Street, to what used to be the king's Head Tavern; and put up a plaque. Gerrard Street! Oh, ah! Yes! Very close, by the way, to Beltring's Restaurant where we were to meet two night ago, and Miss Barbara Morell said . . .”

Suddenly Dr. Fell paused.

His hands went to his forehead. The meerschaum pipe dropped unheeded out of his mouth, bounced against his knee, and rolled to the floor. Afterwards he seemed to congeal into a figure so motionless that not even a wheeze of breath could be hear.

“Pray forgive me,” he said presently, and took his hands away from his forehead. “Absence of mind has some use in this world after all. I think I've got it.”

“Got what?” Miles shouted.

“I know what frightened your sister.--Let me alone for a moment!” Dr. Fell pleaded, with a wild look and an almost piteous voice. “Her body was relaxed! Completely relaxed! We saw it for ourselves! And yet at the same time . . .”

“Well? What about it?”

“Done by design,” Dr. Fell said. “Done by deliberate, brutal design.” He looked startled. “And that must mean, God help us, that--!”

Again realization came into his mind, realization of something else, this time slowly, like an exploring light from room to room. It was as though Miles could follow the workings of his brain, read the moving eyes (for Dr. Fell has not a poker face) without seeing quite past that last nightmarish door to what lay beyond.

“Let's go upstairs,” Dr. Fell said at length, “and see if there is any proof that I'm right.”

Miles nodded. In silence he followed Dr. Fell, who now leaned heavily on his crutch-handled stick, up to Marion's bedroom. From the doctor radiated a shaggy glow of certainty, a fiery energy, which made Miles sure that a barrier had been passed. Henceforward, Miles felt, there was danger. Henceforward they were racing towards trouble. Here's a malignant force, and Dr. Fell knows what it is; we'll kill it, or it will kill us, but look to yourself!--because the game has begun.

Dr. Fell tapped at the bedroom door, which was opened by a youngish nurse in uniform.

Inside the room was dim and a little stuffy, despite sunlight and clean air. The thin blue, gold-figured curtains had been drawn across both sets of windows; and with black-out curtains removed weeks ago, a faint dazzle of sun showed beyond. Marion asleep, lay tidily in a tidy bed and room which showed already the touch of the professional nurse. The nurse herself carrying a hand wash-basin, moved back from opening the door. Stephen Curtis, a pitiable man, stood with hunched shoulders by the chest-of-drawers. And Dr. Garvice, who was just on the point of leaving after his examination, looked round in surprise.

Dr. Fell walked up to him.

“Sir,” he began in a voice which arrested the attention of everyone there, “last night you did me the honour to say you were familiar with my name.”

The other bowed, faintly inquiring.

“I am not,” said Dr. Fell, “a physician; nor have I any medical knowledge beyond that which might be possessed by any man in the street. You may refuse the request I am about to make. You would have every right to do so. But I should like to examine your patient.”

And now showed the inner, troubled state of Dr. Laurence Garvice's mind. He glanced towards the bed.