He Who Whispers

crookedly. “We haven't lost ten minutes.”

“No. But we have lost that time.”

Miles knew that she was frightened now. On the way back, where at least they had been able to step instantly into a train going in the other direction at Chalk Farm, he had been pouring out the story of last night's events. It was plain that Barbara no more knew what to make of it than he did; but she was afraid.

“Number Five,” said Miles. “Number Five.”

It was the last house down on the left, at right angles with the two blitzed houses. Miles noticed something else as he led Barbara over the uneven paving-stone. In a large grimy display-window on the premises of J. Mings & Co. Ltd., was a very large set of artificial teeth.

As an advertising display they might have been considered gruesome or comic, but had they been in a better state of repair they could not have failed to attract attention. Made of metal painted in naturalistic colours as to teeth and gums, they loomed there close-shut and disembodied, a giant's teeth in the faint grey light. Miles didn't like them. He felt their presence behind him as he went to the blistered door of Number Five, on which there was a knocker.

But his hand never reached the knocker.

Instantly a woman's head appeared at the open ground-floor window of the house next door, moving aside what once might have been a lace curtain. She was a middle-aged woman who looked at the newcomers avidly; not at all in suspicion, but with pervading curiosity.

“Miss Fay Seton?” said Miles

The woman turned around towards he room behind her, evidently to kick at something, before she replied. Then she nodded towards Number Five.

“First floor-up-left-front.”

“I—er--just walk in?”

“'Ow else?”

“I see. Thank you.”

The woman gravely inclined her head in acknowledgment of this, and just as gravely withdrew. Miles turned the knob of the door and opened it. He motioned Barbara ahead of him into a passage with a staircase. The stale mildewy air of the passage went over them in a wave. When Miles closed the door it was so dark that they could barely make out the outline of the stairs. Distantly he could hear rain pattering on a skylight.

“I don't like it.” Barbara spoke under her breath. “Why ever does she want to live in a place like this?”

“You know what it is in London nowadays. You can't get anything anywhere for love or money.”

“But why did she keep the room after she'd gone to Greywood?”

Miles wondered that himself. He didn't like the place either. He wanted to shout Fay's name, to be assured sh was here after all.

“First-floor-up-left-front,” said Miles. “Mind the stairs.”

It was a steep staircase, which turned round a steep bend into a narrow passage leading towards the front of the house. At the end of this passage was a window, one of its panes mended with cardboard, which looked down into Bolsover Place. It admitted enough light to show them a closed door on each side of the passage. A few seconds later, when Miles had started for the left-hand door, it admitted still more light as well.

A fairly bright glow sprang up outside that front window, half kindling the little passage with its black linoleum. Miles, his heart in his mouth, had just raised a hand to knock at the left-hand door when the light startled him like an interruption. It startled Barbara too; he heard her heel scrape on the linoleum. Both of them glanced out of the window.

The teeth were moving.

Across the way, in the premises of Messrs. J. Mings & Co., a bored caretaker was amusing a Sunday afternoon by switching on a light in the grimy window and setting in motion the electric mechanism which controlled the set of teeth.

Very slowly they opened, very slowly they closed: endlessly opening and closing o catch you eye. Grimy and evil-looking in disuse, sometimes sticking a little, the pink gums and partly darkened teeth gaped wide and shut again. They had an effect at once theatrical and horribly real. They were soundless and inhuman. Through the window, blurred with rain, they reared a shadow of themselves—slowly, very slowly opening and closing—on the wall of the passage.

Barbara said softly:

“Of all the . . .!”

“Sh-h!”

Miles could not have said why he called for silence; to himself he seemed occupied with the reflection that the display opposite was damned poor advertising and not very funny. He lifted his hand again, and knocked at the door.

“Yes?” called a calm voice, after a very slight pause.

It was Fay's voice. She was all right.

Miles stood motionless for a second or two, watching out of the corner of his eye that blurred shadow moving on the wall, before he turned the knob. The door was not locked. He opened t.

Fay Seton, still in the tweed coat over her dove-grey dress, stood in front of a chest-of-drawers looking round inquiringly. Her expression was placid, not even very interested, until she saw who the newcomer was. Then she gave a smothered cry.

He could see every detail of the room clearly, since the curtains were drawn and the light was burning. A dim bulb hanging over the chest-of-drawers showed him the rather broken-down bedroom furniture, the discoloured wall-paper, the frayed carpet. A heavy tin box, painted black and half as big as a trunk, had been hastily drawn out from under the bed; its lid was not quite shut, and a small padlock hung open from the hasp.

Fay's voice went shrilling up.

“What are you doing here?”

“I followed you! I was told to follow you! You're in danger! There's--”

Miles took two steps into the room.

“I'm afraid you startled me,” said Fay, controlling herself. One hand went under her heart, a gesture he had seen her make before. She gave a little laugh. “ didn't expect--! After all--!” Then, quickly: “Who's that with you?”

“This is Miss Morell. The sister of—well, of Jim Morell. She wants very much to meet you. She . . .”

Then Miles saw what was on top of the chest-of-drawers, and everything in existence seemed to stop.

First he saw an old brief-case of black leather, dried and dusty and cracked, bulging from something inside it; its straps were loosened, and the flap was partly opened. But an old brief-case may belong to anyone. Beside it lay a large, flat packet of banknotes, the topmost one showing the denomination of twenty pounds. The colour of the banknotes might once have been white; they had now a dry, blurred, smeary appearance, and were stained in dry patches of rust-brown.

Fay's pale face was paler yet as she saw the direction of his glance. It seemed very difficult for her to draw breath.

“Yes,” she told him. “Those are bloodstains. Mr. Brooke's blood, you see, got on them when they . . .”

“For the love o God, Fay!”

“I'm not needed here,” Barbara's voice spoke frantically, but not loudly. “I didn't really want to come. But Miles . . .”

“Please do come in,” Fay said in her gentle voice, while the blue eyes kept roving and roving as though she scarcely saw him. “And close the door.”

Yet she was not calm. This apparent case was the effect of sheer despair, or of some emotion akin to it. Miles' head was spinning. He carefully closed the door, to get even a few seconds in which to think. Gently he put his hand on Barbara's shoulder, for Barbara was on the point of running out of the room. He looked round the bedroom, feeling its close air stifle him.

Then he found his voice.

“But you can't be guilty after all!” he said with desperate reasonableness. It seemed vitally important to convince Fay, logically, that she couldn't be guilty. “I tell you, it's impossible! It's . . .Listen!”