He Who Whispers

head to look up at them. His voice sounded hollowly up the stairs.

“Wasn't this woman supposed to have a weak heart?”

“Yes,” said Miles calmly. “Yes. That's right.”

“We'd better ring for an ambulance,” the hollow voice replied. “But she shouldn't have got worked up and run like that. I think it's finished her.

Miles walked slowly downstairs.

His left hand rested on the balustrade where Fay's hand had rested. He dropped the brief-case as he walked. Across the street, seen now through an open front door, the ugly bodiless teeth very slowly opened and closed, opened and closed throughout all eternity, as he bent over Fay's body.

Chapter XVIII

It was half-past six o'clock on that same Sunday evening, though it might have been days later as regards the apparent passage of time, when Miles and Barbara sat in Fay Seton's bedroom up on the first floor.

The electric light was burning again over the chest-of-drawers. Barbara sat in the frayed armchair. Miles sat on the edge of the bed, beside Fay's black beret. He was looking at the battered tin box when Barbara spoke.

“Shall we go out an see if there's a Lyons or an A.B.C. Open on Sunday? Or a pub where they might have a sandwich?”

“No. Hadley told us to stay here.”

“How long has it been since you last had anything to eat?”

“One of the greatest gifts with which a woman can be endowed”--Miles tried to manage a smile, though he felt the smile stretch like a sick leer--”is the gift of not mentioning the subject of food at inconvenient times.”

“Sorry,” said Barbara, an was silent for a long time. “Fay may recover you know.”

“Yes. She may recover.”

And then the silence went on for a very long time, while Barbara plucked at the edges of the chair- arms.

“Does this mean so very much to you, Miles?”

“That isn't the main point at all. I simply felt that this woman has been given the worst possible raw deal from life. That things ought to be put right somehow! That justice ought to be done! That . . .”

He picked up Fay's black beret from the bed, and hastily put it down again.

“Anyway,” he added, “what's the use?”

“In the short time you've known her,” said Barbara, evidently after another struggle to keep silent, “did Fay Seton become as real as Agnes Sorel or Pamela Hoyt?”

“I beg you pardon? What's that?”

“At Beltring's,” answered Barbara without looking at him, “you said a historian's work was to take distant people, dead and gone people, and bring them to life by thinking of them as real people. When you first heard Fay's story, you said she was no more real than Agnes Sorel or Pamela Hoyt.”

In an inconsequential way, still plucking at the edges of the char-arm, Barbara added:

“Agnes Sorel I'd heard of, of course. But I never heard of Pamela Hoyt. I—I looked her up in the encyclopaedia, but sh wasn't there.”

“Pamela Hoyt was a Regency beauty suspected of evil courses. A captivating character, too; I read quite a lot about her at one time. By the way: in Latin, what does panes mean beside the plural of bread? It couldn't have meant bread, from the context.”

It was Barbara's turn to blink at him in surprise.

“I'm afraid I'm not enough of a Latinist to know. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I had a dream.”

“A dream?”

“Yes.” Miles pondered this in the heavy, dully insistent way with which the mind will seize on trifles at a time of emotional disturbance. “It was a passage in mediaeval Latin; you know the sort of thing: peculiar verb-endings and u's instead of v's.” He shook his head. “All about something and panes; but all I can remember now is the ut- clause at the end, that it would be most foolish to deny something.”

“I still don't understand.”

(Why wouldn't that infernally sickish feeling leave his chest?)

“Well, I dreamed I went into the library looking for a Latin dictionary. Pamela Hoyt and Fay Seton were both there, sitting on dusty mounds of books and assuring me my uncle hadn't got a Latin dictionary.” Miles started to laugh. “Funny thing, too; just remembered it. I don't know what Dr. Freud would have made of that one.”

“I do,” said Barbara.

“Something sinister, I imagine. It would appear to be something sinister no matter what you dream.”

“No,” said Barbara slowly. “Nothing like that.”

For some time she had been regarding Miles in the same hesitant, baffled, helpless way, the luminous whites of her eyes shining in sympathy. Then Barbara sprang to her feet. Both windows had been opened to the drizzling afternoon, admitting clean damp air. At least, Miles reflected, they had shut off the advertising lights and that dental horror across the street. Barbara turned at the window.

“Poor woman!” Barbara sad, and he knew she was not referring to a dead Pamela Hoyt. “Poor, silly, romantic . . .!”

“Why do you call Fay silly and romantic?”

“She knew those anonymous letters, and all the rumours about her, were the work of Harry Brooke. But she never said so to anybody. I suppose,” Barbara shook her head slowly, “she may still have been in love with him.”

“After that?”

“Of course.”

“I don't believe it!”

“It might have been that. We all—we all are capable of awfully funny things. Or,” Barbara shivered, “there may have been some other reason for keeping silent, even after she knew Harry was dead. I don't know. The point it . . .”

“The point is,” said Miles, “why is Hadley keeping us here? And what's going on?” He considered. “Is it very far to this What's-its-name Hospital where they've taken her?”

“A goodish distance, yes. Were you thinking of going there?”

“Well, Hadley can't keep us here indefinitely for no apparent reason at all. We've got to get SOME kind of news.”

They received some kind of news. Professor Georges Antoine Rigaud—they heard his distinctive step long before they saw him— came slowly up the stairs, along the passage, and in at the open door.

Professor Rigaud seemed an older and even more troubled man than when he had voiced his theory about a vampire. Only a few drops of rain fell now, so that he was comparatively dry. His soft dark hat was jammed down all round his head. His patch of moustache worked with the movement of his mouth. He leaned heavily on the yellow sword-cane which acquired such evil colour in this dingy room.

“Mees Morell,” he said. His voice was husky. “Mr. Hammond. Now I will tell you something.”

He moved forward from the door.

“My friends, you are no doubt familiar with the great Musketeer romances of the elder Dumas. You will recall how the Musketeers went to England. You will recall that the only two words of English known to D'Artagnan were 'Come' and 'God damn.'” He shook a thick arm in the air. “Would that my knowledge of the English language were confined to the same harmless and uncomplicated terms!”

Miles sprang from the edge of the bed.

“Never mind D'Artagnan, Professor Rigaud. How did you get here?”

“Dr. Fell and I,” said the other, “have arrived back by car from the New Forest. We have telephoned his friend the police superintendent. Dr. Fell goes to the hospital, and I come here.”

“You've just come from the New Forest. How's Marion?”

“In health,” returned Professor Rigaud, “she is excellent. She is sitting up and eating food and talking what you call twenty to the dozen.”