The Sleeping Sphinx

If Derek Hurst-Gore had expected to produce an effect on Dr. Fell, he must have succeeded far beyond his hopes. Dr. Fell's mouth hung open. His eyes became fixed and glazed. It is not possible for a man of his complexion to become pale, yet he showed an approach to it now.

'Oh, Lord!' whispered Dr. Fell. 'I heard it. With my own ears I heard it. He looked at Holden. 'You told me. Yet with my scatterbrain on other matters, I never thought of the possibility that—' His bandit’s moustache puffed in agitation. 'My dear Holden! Listen! You have no time to lose. You must be sure of catching that train. Holden! Wait!'

But Holden was not listening. He was off in search of Celia.

The inner walls of those long galleries had windows which looked out over the center quadrangle, weedy and overgrown, of the cloisters where once nuns had walked. The bedroom doors, in this gallery, had outer doors of stuffed leather, edged with brass nailheads, to deaden sound. Holden threw open the leather door of Celia's room, knocked at the inner door, and opened it

In a small bedroom with an oriel window, Celia sat before the mirror of a Queen Anne dressing table in the window embrasure. She had just finished dressing, and she was brushing her hair. Their eyes met in the mirror.

Holden took the two steps down into the room, amid a beauty of furniture whose polished age and grace showed brown-dark against white walls. There were little woven rugs on the floor.

'Celia,' he said, 'have you been telling lies?'

'Yes,' answered Celia quietly.

She put down the brush. She got up, turned round, and stood facing him with her back to the dressing table.

'I invented that whole story,' not a syllable was blurred in the clear voice, 'about what happened in the Long Gallery on Christmas Eve. Not a scrap of it is true, and I don't believe in ghosts myself. Please wait, before you say anything!'

Though the gray eyes remained steady, utter self-loathing colored Celia's cheeks. Her fingers touched the edges of the dressing table behind her, and gripped the edges. So intense was the silence that he could hear a ring on her finger scrape against the dressing table.

'I wanted to tell you,' she went on, 'in the playground on Wednesday night But I kept away from it because I was so ashamed. Then—Dr. Shepton got there, before I could tell you the truth. And you heard things from him.

'That's been between us, Don. I kept away from you on Thursday because I was ashamed. Then, when Dr. Fell broke down Thorley's story in front of the Lockes and absolutely smashed him to bits, I thought it didn't matter any longer and I could tell you. But immediately Dr. Fell said Thorley was all innocent and holy; things turned upside down again. So I said to myself: All right; I will go through with the business of opening the tomb.'

He could see the rigidity of her shoulders, under a thin gray silk dress.

'When I told you people that ghost story, Don, I was acting. Every bit of it. Now hate me. Go on: hate me! I deserve it!'

Still, all about him, the silence seemed to make an island. 'Why don't you speak, Don? Why do you just stand there and look at me? Don't you understand. I've been telling lies.' 'Thank God,' said Holden.

He spoke so softly, in such a deep and heart-felt relief, that it hardly whispered across the dazzling sunlit space between them.

'What's... that?' Celia whispered back.

'I said, thank God.'

Celia's knees shook. Her fingers relaxed on the edge of the dressing table. She sank down abruptly on the brocade-covered seat in front of the table, staring at him.

'You mean,' she cried, 'you don't care?'

'Care?' shouted Holden. 'I never was so delighted with any news in all my born days.' In a dizziness of relief, he addressed the ceiling oratorically.

'The Cimmerian night,' he said, 'o'ershadows us. Howling monsters in outer darkness rage. But Celia has been telling lies; the sun shines again; and all is gas and gaiters.'

'Are you j-joking?'

'Yes! No! I don't know!'

In four strides he covered the distance between them.

'I knew,' he told her, 'that what you said wasn't true. I knew it in my heart But I was afraid you believed it yourself. So I was afraid it might be—something else. And now, glory be, I hear it's only . . .'

'Don! For heaven's sake! Don't hold me back over the dressing table! Mind the mirror! Mind the powder bowl! I mean—I don't care; hit 'em all over the place if you like. But. . .'

'But,' he demanded, lifting her to her feet again, 'Dr. Fell's told you what the police think of this?'

'Oh, the police?' said Celia, with weary indifference. 'That doesn't matter. What does matter, don't you see, is that I can't ever look you in the face again?'

'Celia. Look at me now.'

'I won't! I can't!'

'Celial'

Presently, after a considerable interval, he added:

'Now listen. Whether you like it or not, we have got to get you out of this. You did put that bottle there, before the vault was sealed? Just as Dr. Fell suggested?' 'Yes.'

'Why did you do it Celia?'

'To prove, replied Celia, writhing in self-disgust 'that g-ghosts were denouncing Thorley for driving Margot to suicide. Because that’ s what Thorley did, Don! That’s true!' She broke off. 'I know it was silly. I told you Wednesday night it was silly. But I was desperate. It was all I could think of.'

'Where did you get the bottle?'

'Don, I had no idea it was the real bottle!'

'The strongest part of the case against you, Celia, and so far the unanswerable part, is that you alone could have been in possession of the poison bottle after Margot’s death.'

'But I wasn't in possession of it I found it'

'You found it?'

'All those bottles look alike, don't they? Or, at least I thought they did. I thought if I got hold of a fake bottle, that just looked like the original bottle, it would do just as well. You remember how dusty and dirty it was, so that you could hardly read the label?'

'Yes?'

'It was in the cellar,' Celia told him, 'among dozens and dozens of other discarded bottles. All dirty. I never thought. . .'

'The cellar here at Caswall, you mean?'

'Don! No! There's no cellar here, except the nun's rooms, ind they're not really cellars. I mean at Widestairs. That was why I never dreamed of associating it with the real bottle, because I thought Margot’d thrown the real bottle into the moat'

'You found it in the cellar at Widestairs?'

'Yes.'

Holden stepped back, away from the blaze of sun at the oriel window and the loom of a stableyard clock whose hands now pointed to fifteen minutes past twelve.

It was, he thought, exactly the sort of bitter and ironical situation he might have expected. Celia, in frantic search of an imitation bottle, finds the original and doesn't know it. Back comes boomeranging the evidence against this wily mistress of crime, who hasn't even the detective-story knowledge to remove her fingerprints from the bottle.

Celia finds the bottle (significantly?) at Widestairs. But could they prove that? Would the police believe it?

(It seemed to him that, somewhere in the galleries beyond the padded door, Dr. Fell was bellowing his name.)

'And, Don!' Celia put her hand on his arm. 'I—I didn't know it until last night. It was only a guess or a joke