He Who Whispers

was wise to keep my little room in town. And a brief-case is so useful, isn't it? But don't worry. I shall return after nightfall.

Yours sincerely,

Fay Seton.

The sky , which had been fine, was clouding over with little smoky wisps of black: a moving sky, an uneasy sky. Miles held the letter close to the window, and read it aloud. That was when the ominous word “brief-case” stuck out at him.

“Oh, my God!” breathed Dr. Fell. He said this very simply, as a man might witness ruin or tragedy. “And yet I ought to have guessed it. I ought to have guessed it. I ought to have guessed it!”

“But what's wrong?” demanded Miles. “Fay says she'll be back after nightfall.”

“Yes. Oh, ah. Yes.” Dr. Fell rolled his eyes. “I wonder what time she left here? I WONDER what time she left here?”

“I don't know,” said Garvice hastily. “Don't look at me!”

“But somebody must have seen her go!” bellowed Dr. Fell. “A conspicuous girl like that? Tall, red-haired, probably wearing . . .”

The door to Marion's bedroom opened, Miss Peters, putting her head out in protest against the noise, saw Dr. Garvice and stopped short.

“Oh. Didn't know you were here, Doctor,” the nurse said pointedly, in a small reproving voice. Afterwards, moved by human curiosity, she wavered. “Pardon me. If you're looking for a woman of that description . . .”

Dr. Fell wheeled round in vastness.

“Yes?”

“I think maybe I saw her,” the nurse informed him.

“When?” roared Dr. Fell. The nurse shied back. “Where?”

“Nearly—nearly three-quarters of an hour ago, when I was coming here on my bicycle. She was getting on the bus out in the main road.”

“A bus,” demanded Dr. Fell, “that would take her to Southampton Central railway station? Oh, ah! And what train to London could she catch by taking the bus?”

“Well, there's the one-thirty,” replied Garvice. “She could make that one comfortably.”

“The one-thirty?” echoed Miles Hammond. “But that's the train I'm taking! I intended to get the bus that would . . .”

“You mean that wouldn't,” corrected Garvice with a rather strained smile. “You'll never make that train by bus, even by private car unless you drove like Sr Malcolm Campbell. It's ten minutes past one now.”

“Listen to me,” said Dr. Fell in a voice he very seldom used. His hand fell on Miles' shoulder. “You are going to catch that one-thirty train.”

“But that's impossible! There's a man who does a car-hire service to and from the station—Steve always uses him—but it would take too long to get him here. It's out of the question!”

“You forget,” said Dr. Fell, “that Rigaud's illegally borrowed car is still outside in the drive.” There was a wild, strained look in his eyes. “Listen to me!” he repeated. “It is absolutely vital for you to overtake Fay Seton. Absolutely vital. Are you willing to have a shot at catching the train?”

“Hell, yes. I'll drive her at ninety an hour. But suppose I do miss the train?”

“I don't know!” roared Dr. Fell as though in physical pain, and hammered his fist against his temple. “This 'little room in town' she speaks about. She's going there—yes, of course she is! Have you got her London address?”

“No. She came straight to me from the employment agency.”

“in that case,” said Dr. Fell, “you have simply got to catch the train. I'll explain as much as possible while we run. But something damnable is going to happen, I warn you here and now, if that woman tries to carry out her plans. It is quite literally a matter of life and death. You have got to catch that train!”

Chapter XIV

The guard's whistle piped shrilly.

Two or three last doors slammed. The one-thirty train to London, smoothly gliding, drew out of Southampton Central Station and gathered speed so that its windows seemed to flash past.

“You can't do it, I tell you!” panted Stephen Curtis.

“Want to bet?” Miles said through his teeth. “Drive the car back, Steve. I'm all right now.”

“Never jump on a train when it's going as fast as that!” yelled Stephen. “Never . . .”

The voice receded. Miles was running blindly beside the door of a first-class smoking compartment. He dodged a luggage-truck, with someone shouting at him, and laid hold of the door-handle. Since the train was on his let-hand side as he ran, the jump wasn't going to be easy.

He yanked open the door, felt through his back the terrifying crick-crack twinge of overbalancement as he jumped, saved himself by a reeling catch at the side of the door, and, with the dizziness of his old illness pouring through his head, slammed the door behind him.

He had made it. He was on the same train with Fay Seton. Miles stood at the open window, panting and half-blind, staring out and listening to the click of the wheels. When he had partly got his breath he turned round.

Ten pairs of eyes regarded him with barely concealed loathing.

The first-class compartment, nominally built to seat six persons, now held five squeezed in on each side. To railway travellers there is always something infuriating about a late arrival who gets in at the last moment, and this was a particularly bad case. Though no one said anything, the atmosphere was glacial except for a stoutish Waaf who gave him a glance of encouragement.

“I—er--beg you pardon,” said Miles.

He wondered vaguely whether he ought to add a maxim from the letters of Lord Chesterfield, some little apothegm of this sort; but he sense the atmosphere and in any case he had other things to worry about.

Miles stumbled hastily across feet, gained the door to the corridor, went out and closed it behind him and a general wave of thankfulness. Here he stood considering. He was reasonably presentable, having sloshed water on his face and scraped himself raw with a dry razor, though his empty stomach cried aloud. But this wasn't important.

The important thing was to find Fay immediately.

It was not a long train, and not very crowded. That is to say, people were packed into seats trying to read newspapers with their hands flat against their breasts like corpses; dozens stood in the corridor amid barricades of luggage. But few were actually standing inside the compartments except those fat women with third-class tickets who go and stand in first-class compartments, radiating reproachfulness, until some guilty-feeling male gives them his seat.

Working his way along the corridors, tripping over luggage, becoming entangled with people queuing for lavatories, Miles tried to work out a philosophical essay in his mind. He was watching, he said to himself, a whole cross-section of England as the rain rattled and swayed, and the green countryside flashed by, and he peered into one compartment after another.

But, in actual fact, he wasn't feeling philosophical.

After a first quick journey he was apprehensive. After a second he was panicky. After a third . . .

For Fay Seton was not aboard the train.

Steady, now! Don't get the wind up!

Fay's got to be here!

But she wasn't.

Miles stood in a corridor midway along the length of the train, gripping the window-raining and trying to keep calm. The afternoon had grown warmer and darker, in black smoky clouds that seemed to mix with the smoke of the train. Miles stared out of the window until the moving landscape blurred. He was seeing Dr. Fell's frightened face, and hearing Dr. Fell's voice.

That “explanation,” delivered by the doctor in a vacant undertone while engaged in cramming biscuits into Miles' pockets to take the place of breakfast, had not been very coherent.