Celia stared at the past
'But that explains—oh, that explains everything! Don! Didn't you read this letter?'
'I started to read it yes. But that was when you and Dr. Fell knocked at the door. Who is the swine, anyway?'
Up the stairs out in the passage, with the effect of a competent quiet invasion, came a brisk young bachelor of medicine followed by two men carrying a folded stretcher. The young doctor made a feint of rapping on the inside of the open door.
'Emergency case?'
Holden nodded toward the back room. The deputation was met by Dr. Fell, who closed the door after them; and they could hear Dr. Fell's voice upraised in rapid speech as he did so.
Someone had followed the newcomers up the stairs. Old Dr. Eric Shepton, panting a little from the climb, his Panama hat in his hands and his white hair fluffed out round the bald head, loomed up big and stoop shouldered in the doorway. The kindly eye, the stubborn reticent jaw, had an air subtly different from his bearing in the playground.
'Celia, my dear!' he began.
Celia was paying no attention.
'At first it seems utterly incredible!' she said, taking a quick look at the letter and then folding it up into small creases. 'And yet,' she added, 'is it so incredible? When you think of Margot? No. It's dreadfully right.'
'Er—Celia, my dear!'
Celia woke up.
'You wouldn t speak to me,' Shepton told her in a half-humorous tone, 'all the way up in the car. And I hardly liked to speak in front of a stranger like Mr. Hurst-Gore. But I'm only a country g.p. I make more mistakes than I like to think, let alone admit If I've made a mistake in your case ...'
'Dr. Shepton!' Celia's eyes opened wide. 'You don't think I'm holding that against you?'
The other looked startled. 'Weren't you?'
'I told lies,' said Celia, with a calmness which concealed misery. 'What could you, or any decent person, possibly think? They'll probably arrest me; and heaven knows I shall deserve it' She put her hands over her eyes, and then flung them away again. 'But why, oh, why couldn't you have told me about the other matter?'
'Because I was right not to do so,' retorted the other, with a good deal of the kindliness vanishing under a hard shell. 'And, London detectives or no London detectives, I still think I was right'
'Dr. Shepton, if you'd only told me!'
The door to the rear room opened.
Holden had no time to think about the meaning of the cryptic speeches he had just heard, though pain and anguish rang in Celia's voice.
Thorley Marsh, muffled to the head in a white covering, was gently and dexterously moved out on the stretcher. Thorley was still unconscious. But he was sobbing, in great gulping sobs which shook the white cloth.
The young physician from the nursing home, whose face was very grave, turned and addressed Dr. Fell.
'You understand, sir, that this will have to be reported to the police?'
'Sir,' returned Dr. FelL 'by all means. You also have my assurance that I will report it myself. Exactly—how is he?'
'Pretty bad.'
'Oh, ahl But I mean . .. ?'
'About one chance in ten. Gently, boys!'
I can't, Holden was thinking to himself, I can't stand that sobbing much longer. Thorley might know nothing; might feel nothing; he wandered mindless in some dim hinterland. Yet even in unconsciousness there is no sobbing without rooted cause.
Celia, her hands again pressed over her eyes, turned her back as that cortege went downstairs. Nobody spoke. Up the stairs after it had passed, moving softly, but gazing down at Thorley, came Sir Danvers Locke.
Locke, fastidious in an admirably cut blue suit, carrying a gray Homburg hat, gray gloves, and a walking stick, stood in the doorway in silence. The flesh was strained tight over his cheek bones; his mouth looked uncertain.
'If they'd only told me!' cried Celia. 'If they'd only told me!'
Dr. Fell, so vast that he had to maneuver sideways through the door of the rear room and duck his head under it, now towered among them. His face was fiery.
'My friend,' he said to Holden, 'this has gone far enough. We are going to end it That contraption!' He pointed to the telephone with his cane.
'Yes?
'It is (harrumph) erratic and unreliable. It never gets me the number I dial. Will you be good enough to outwit the blighter,' intoned Dr. Fell, running his hand through his hair, 'and get me the number I want?'
'Certainly. What number?'
'Whitehall 1212.'
A stir, as of a very slight shock of electricity tingling the muscles, ran through the group at mention of that famous phone number. Seven times the dial whirred and clicked back. Then Holden handed the phone to Dr. Fell.
'Metropolitan police?' roared Dr. Fell, his several chins thrown back and his eyes villainously squinted at a comer of the ceiling. 'I want to speak to Superintendent Hadley. My name is ... oh, you recognize my voice? Yes;
As though she could endure the atmosphere of this room no longer, Celia raised the window by which she was stand' ing. A gust of cooler air, grateful and cleansing, swept out the brocade curtains.
'Hadley?' said Dr. Fell, holding up the phone as though it were a jug from which he was about to drink. 'I say. About this Caswall business.'
The telephone spoke rapidly from the other end,
'Sol' intoned Dr. Fell. 'You got the order through and the post-mortem done in one day? What was it? Was it morphine and belladonna? Oh, ah. Good!'
Dr. Eric Shepton, staring at the floor, shook his head violently as though denying this. But Sir Danvers Locke was a picture of understanding.
'Well, look here,' said Dr. Fell. 'I'm now at 56b New Bond Street, top floor. Can you come over here straightaway?'
The telephone made angry protests, concluding with a single-word query.
'If you do,' replied Dr. Fell, 'I will present you with the murderer of Mrs. Marsh and the attempted murderer of Thorley Marsh.'
Celia opened the other window, which ran up with a screech. Nobody else moved or spoke.
'No, of course I'm not jokingl' roared Dr. Fell. His eye wandered round. 'I have with me a group of (harrumph) friends now. Perhaps others will join us. I propose to begin now, and tell them the whole story.— When may we expect you? Right!'
He set back the phone with a clatter on its cradle, and swung round.
'One Hadley,' he said, 'one arrest.'
Sir Danvers Locke, uttering a small cough to attract attention, moved forward. Of all the persons here, Holden wished most he could read the thoughts in Locke's head. When he thought of Locke sitting before a mirror, in the sympathetic presence of Mademoiselle Frey, and talking in a wild way about the 'callousness and ruthlessness' of his own daughter (why Doris?), Holden could fit together no decipherable pattern.
'Dr. Fell!' said Locke. He paused for a moment. 'Do you indeed propose to tell—the whole story?'
Nerve tension, under this studious politeness, was steadily going up.
'Yes,' returned Dr. Fell.
'Do you mind, then, if I join you?'
'On the contrary, sir.' Dr. Fell fumbled at his eyeglasses. 'Your presence is almost a necessity.' He paused. 'I do not ask the obvious question.'
