The Sleeping Sphinx

windows, had been pushed away into one corner. In another comer stood a dappled rocking horse which still retained its tail. Yet over everything lay a film of dust, disturbed dust, which added to the dimness of the room.

Dr. Fell, who had discarded his hat and cloak, sat by the fireplace in an armchair once sacred to Obey. From one corner of the doctor's mouth hung a curved meerschaum pipe, long ago gone out He had got hold of a large rubber ball, once colored red, which with grave absorption he was bouncing on the floor.

He stopped bouncing the ball as Holden entered.

'Sir,' said Dr. Fell, taking the pipe out of his mouth as well, 'good morning.'

'Good morning. I'm up a bit late, I'm afraid. And last night I was . . .'

'Delayed? So I understand.'

Dr. Fell scowled very intently at the rubber ball.

'I, on the other hand,' he went on, 'performed the incredible feat of getting up at eight o'clock. I have gone to Widestairs. I have had interviews with several persons there.' He looked up. 'I have also had a report from the police.'

That glance should have conveyed a warning across the hot, dusky room. But it didn't Holden was too absolutely, and properly, convinced of his own theory.

'Yes?' he inquired.

'You (harrumph) wish to lend all assistance in this unpleasant business?' '’Naturally!'

'Then would you be prepared,' asked Dr. Fell, 'to take a train for London leaving in about an hour? To go on another errand to an address I propose to give you?'

Another errand, eh?

For a moment his companion merely stared at him. Then rebellion, black and full of bile, rose in Donald Holden's soul.

'No, sir,' he replied. 'I am not prepared to do that.' 'Oh, ah,' assented Dr. Fell, contemplating the rubber ball with a somewhat guilty air.

'But before I tell you why I won't, Dr. Fell, I wonder l whether I can guess the address where you want to send me? i Is it 'Madame Vanya, 56b New Bond Street?''

Dr. Fell, who had been about to bounce the ball again, stopped short. He grew intent He raised his eyes, adjusting the lopsided eyeglasses.

'That’s good,' he said. 'In the speech of Somerset, it is clever-good. Have you anything else to tell me?'

'Well, sir,' Holden's throat felt dry, 'if you wouldn't mind returning the notebook you borrowed last night —?'

'Was that yours? My dear boy!' said Dr. Fell, in a huge burst of contrition which blew wide a film of ash from his pipe and sent an alarming crack through the framework of , the chair. 'How extraordinary! I was wondering where and ! when I could have bought it One moment! Here you are. , And somebody's pencil.'

'Thank you.'

'But what—er—are you going to do?'

A pulse in Holden's temples thumped heavily. The heat ' and dust of the room pressed down. This was the test.

'Dr. Fell, I may be entirely wrong. But I'm going to adopt your own trick.'

'Trick?'

'I'm going to write down, in two words, what I believe to be the key to the solution of Margot's murder.' Holden scribbled the words, tore out the sheet, and handed it to Dr. Fell. 'Will you tell me whether that’s right?'

There was a little space of silence while, he looked down ' at Dr. Fell in the old black-alpaca suit, and around at the wardrobes and the doll houses and the rocking horse. Dr. i Fell, who had put down pipe and ball to take the paper, sat . with his eyes closed.

'Sir,' announced Dr. Fell, 'I am an old fool.' He lifted his hand, as though forestalling comment.

'You will say,' he went on, 'that this leaps to the eye and needs no emphasis. Yet in spite of hearing it for so many yean, especially from my wife and Superintendent Hadley, I never quite believed it until now. Archons of Athens! I should have trusted your intelligence!'

Fiery certainty came to Holden.

'Then that’s right, sir? What I wrote down?'

'So nearly right' said Dr. Fell, 'as makes no difference. With one slight variation, which of course you will have deduced for yourself, a ringing bull's-eye.'

Crumpling up the piece of paper, he flung it over the fire screen into the empty grate.

'I was an utter ass,' groaned Dr. FeD, 'to worry- about it at all! I should have known you wouldn't misunderstand—er —well! certain things that are open to misunderstanding. My boy, how you relieve my mind!

Holden smiled.

'Then you do appreciate my position, Dr. Fell? About not wanting to rush off to London? Dr. Fell looked at him blankly. 'Hey?'

'My only concern in this affair,' said Holden, 'is Celia.' 'Exactly, exactly! But...'

'After a long time,' said Holden, 'I find her again. But no sooner do I try to see Celia, speak to her, have five minutes alone with her, than somebody tells me I can't possibly see her by doctor's orders. Or sends me haring off somewhere away from her, as you now want to send me to London.

'Well, I won't do it I'm damned if I will. I'm sick and tired of obeying orders, Service or otherwise. What I want to do is to sit down with Celia, and keep her near me where I can touch her, for hours and days and weeks and months on end. That's what I propose to do, and—'

He paused. Dr. Fell, mouth open, was regarding him with a face of dismay.

'God alive!' whispered Dr. Fell. 'Then you don't understand!'

'Understand what?'

'You have the wit,' said Dr. Fell, pointing toward the crumpled paper in the grate, 'to work that out The difficult point doesn't escape you. Yet looming up, overshadowing everything, you don't see . . .'

'See what? What is an this?'

'My dear sir,' Dr. Fell said gently. 'Don't you see that in a few days the police will probably arrest Celia for murder?' Dead silence.

There is a phrase about the room seeming to swim around in front of someone's eyes, which is often derided. Yet, perhaps from the physical effect of the heat the closeness, the nerve strain of the past two days, something like that happened to Donald Holden now.

As though through blurred transparency, he saw the scuffed walls, the blackened matting, the fireplace with its biblical riles, the wardrobes and doll houses, move out or up from their places, waveringly dissolve in line, and settle back again., The glass eye of the rocking horse seemed alive. Yet the effect of Dr. Fell's statement was such as to keep Holden outwardly calm.

'That,'' he said, 'is too nonsensical to be talked about'

'Is it, my dear sir? Think! Try to think!'

'I am thinking.' (He lied.)

'Don't you see the strength of the case that can be built up against Celia?'

'There is no case against her.'

'Sit down,' said Dr. Fell in a heavily wheezing voice.

Beside the nearer of the doll houses there was an old chair. Putting away notebook and pencil—that brave notebook and pencil!—Holden brought back the chair and planted it across the hearth from Dr. Fell.

He found and lit a cigarette, with a steady hand, before sitting down.

'Just a moment!' he interposed, as Dr. Fell started to speak. 'You don't believe—?'

'In Celia's guilt? No, no, no!' said Dr. FeD. 'My belief is; the same as yours. And I think, if you use your wits, you; will see the face of the real murderer.'

Here Dr. Fell hitched his chair forward, earnestly.

'But if s not a question,' he went on, 'of what I believe.; If s a question of what Hadley and Madden believe. That long; letter of hers, her conversation with you in the playground on Wednesday night (which was overheard),