He Who Whispers

Steady!”

“The Harry Brookes of this world,” said Miles, “always get away with it. Whether it's luck, or circumstances, or some celestial gift in their own natures, I don't pretend to guess. That fellow ought to have gone to the guillotine, or spent the rest of his life on Devil's Island. Instead it's Fay Seton, who never did the least harm to anybody, who . . .” His voice rose up. “By God, I wish I could have met Harry Brooke six years ago! I'd give my soul to have a reckoning with him!”

“That's not difficult,” remarked Dr. Fell. “Would you like to have a reckoning with him now?”

An enormous crash of thunder, rolling in broken echoes over the roof-tops, flung ts noise into the room. Raindrops blew past Dr. Fell as he sat by the window: not quite so ruddy of countenance now, with his unlighted pipe in his hand.

Dr. Fell raised his voice.

“Are you out there, Hadley?” he shouted.

Barbara jumped away from the door; staring, she groped back to stand at the foot of the bed. Professor Rigaud used a French expletive not often heard in polite society.

And then everything seemed to happen at once.

As a rain-laden breeze came in at the windows, making the hanging lamp sway over the chest-of-drawers, some heavy weight thudded against the outside of the closed door to the passage. The knob twisted only slightly, but frantically, as though hands fought for it. Then the door banged open, rebounding against the wall. Three men, who were trying to keep their feet while fighting, lurched forward in a wrestling-group which almost toppled over when it banged against the tin box.

On one side was Superintendent Hadley, trying to grip somebody's wrists. On the other side was a uniformed police-inspector. In the middle . . .

“Professor Rigaud”--Dr. Fell's voice spoke clearly—“will you be good enough to identify that chap for us? The man in the middle?”

Miles Hammond looked for himself at the staring eyes, the corners of the mouth drawn back, the writhing legs that kicked out at his captors with vicious and sinewy strength. It was Miles who answered.

“Identify him?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Fell.

“Look here,” cried Miles, “what is all this? That's Steve Curtis, my sister's fiance! What are you trying to do?”

“We are trying,” thundered Dr. Fell, “to make an identification. And I think we have done it. For the man who calls himself Stephen Curtis is Harry Brooke.”

Chapter XX

Frederic, the head-waiter at Beltring's Restaurant—which is one of the few places in the West End where you can get food on a Sunday—was always glad to oblige Dr. Fell, even when Dr. Fell wanted a private room on short notice.

Frederic's manner froze to ice when he saw the doctor's three guests: Professor Rigaud, Mr. Hammond, and small fair-haired Miss Morell, the same three who had been at Beltring's two nights before.

But the guests did not seem happy either, especially at what Frederic considered a very tactful gesture on his part; for he ushered them into the same private dining-room as before, the room used by the Murder Club. He noticed that they seemed to eat rather from a sense of duty than any appreciation of the menu.

He did not se that their looks were even stranger afterwards, when they sat round the table.

“I will now,” groaned Professor Rigaud, “take my medicine. Continue.”

“Yes,” said Miles, without looking at Dr. Fell. “Continue.”

Barbara was silent.

“Look here!” protested Dr. Fell, making vast and vague gestures of distress which spilled ash from his pipe down his waistcoat. “Wouldn't you rather wait until . . .”

“No,” said Miles, and stared hard at a salt-cellar.

“Then I ask you,” said Dr. Fell, “to take your minds back to last nigh at Greywood, when Rigaud and I had arrived on Rigaud's romantic mission to warn you about vampirism.”

“I also wished,” observed the professor a trifle guiltily, “to have a look at Sr Charles Hammond's library. But in all the time I am at Greywood the one room I do not see is the library. Life is like that.”

Dr. Fell looked at Miles.

“You and Rigaud and I,” he pursued, “were in the sitting room, and you had just told me Fay Seton's own account of the Brook murder.

“Harry Brooke, I decided, was the murderer. But his motive? That was where I had the glimmer of a guess—based, I think, on your description of Fay's hysterical laughter when you asked if she had married Harry— that these anonymous letters, these slanderous reports, were a put-up job managed by the unpleasant Harry himself.

“Mind you! I never once suspected the reports were really true after all, until Fay Seton told me so herself in the hospital this evening. It made blazing sense of so much that was obscure; it completed the pattern, but I never suspected it.

“What I saw was an innocent woman traduced by the man who pretended to be in love with her. Suppose Howard Brooke found this out, from the mysterious letter Harry was writing on the afternoon of the murder? In that case the person we must find was the equally mysterious correspondent, Jim Morell.

“This hypothesis would explain why Harry killed his father. It would show Fay as innocent of everything except—for some reason of her own!--hiding the brief-case that was dropped into the river, and never denouncing Harry. In any case the charge of vampirism was nonsense. I was just announcing this to you when . . .

“We heard a revolver-shot upstairs. We found what had happened to your sister.

“And I didn't understand anything.

“However! Let me now put together certain points I saw for myself, certain information you gave me, and certain other information given by your sister Marion when she was able to make a statement before we left Greywood. Let me show you how the whole game was played out under your eyes.

“On Saturday afternoon, at four o'clock, you met your sister and 'Stephen Curtis' at Waterloo Station. In the tea-room you flung your hand-grenade (though of course you didn't know it at the time) by announcing you had engaged Fay Seton to come to Greywood. Is that correct?”

“Steve! Steve Curtis!” Resolutely Miles shut out of his mind the face that kept appearing between him and the candle-flames.

“Yes,” Miles agreed. “That's correct.”

“How did the alleged Stephen Curtis receive the news?”

“In the light of what we know now,” Miles replied dryly, “t would be a strong understatement to say he didn't like t. But he announced that he couldn't go back to Greywood with us that evening.”

“Had you known he couldn't go back to Greywood with you that evening?”

“No! Now you mention it, it surprised Marion as much as I did me. Steve began to talk rather hastily about a sudden crisis at the office.”

“Was the name of Professor Rigaud mentioned at any time? Was 'Curtis' aware you'd met Rigaud?”

Miles pressed a hand against his eyes, reconstructing the scene. H saw, in blurred colours which sharpened to such ugliness, “Steve” fiddling with his pipe and “Steve” putting on his hat and “Steve” somewhat shakily laughing.

“No!” Miles responded. “Come to think of it, he didn't even know I'd gone to a meeting of the Murder Club, or what the Murder Club was. I did say something about 'the professor,' but I'll swear I never mentioned Rigaud's name.”

Dr. Fell bent forward, with a pink-faced and terrifying benevolence.

“Fay Seton,” Dr. Fell said softly, “still held the evidence which could send Harry Brook to the guillotine. But,if Fay Seton was disposed of, there would apparently be nobody to connect 'Stephen Curtis' with Harry Brooke.”

Miles started to push back his chair.

“God Almighty!” he said. “You mean . . . ?”