'Joseph!' I said, not loudly. 'Joseph!'
One hand fell with a flat smack on the table. He rolled his body round slowly, and peered up.... It was not that the face was witless; once upon a time it might have been highly intelligent. A film was over his eyes, whose pupils were contracted nearly to invisibility, and yellowish round the iris. When they came to focus on me, he cringed away. A smile was parodied on his big mouth. When I had seen him a few hours before, by the beam of a flashlight, he had seemed quiet and dull and incurious enough. But not like this.
I repeated his name, and went slowly towards him. 'It's all right, Joseph. It's all right. I'm a doctor, Joseph....
'Don't you touch me!' he said. He did not speak at all loudly, but he gave such a jerk backwards that I thought he meant to duck down under the bench. 'Don't you touch me, now....'
I got my fingers on his wrist, by dint of keeping his eye (an excellent hypnotic subject); he trembled, and kept jerking back. To judge by the pulse, whoever had given him that dose of morphine had gone a little too far. He was not in danger, however, for he was obviously accustomed to it.
'Of course. You're ill, Joseph. You're often ill, aren't you? And so you get medicine, of course....'
'Please, Sir.' He shrank again, with a ducking motion, and an ingratiating look. 'Please, Sir, I feel quite well now, thank you, sir. Will you let me go?' Suddenly he became voluble. It was the voice of a young schoolboy blurting out a confession to a master. 'I know now! You want to find out. Please, I didn't mean any harm! I know he told me I shouldn't ought to have any medicine tonight, but I took it anyway, because I know where he keeps the case. So I took the case ... but I only took the medicine a very little while ago, sir! Only a very little while ago....'
'Medicine you put in your arm, Joseph?'
'Yes, Sir!' His hand moved towards his inside pocket, with the child's hurry to show you everything once he has confessed, and lighten the blame. 'I'll show you. Here-'
'Mr. Darworth gives you this medicine, Joseph?'
'Yes, Sir. When there is to be a seance, and then I go into a trance. That's what makes the forces gather; but of course I don't know that, because I never see anything. . . .' Joseph burst out laughing. 'I say, I shouldn't be telling you this. I was told never to tell. Who are you? Besides, I thought it would be better if I took twice as big a dose tonight, because I liked the medicine, and I'd like it twice as well if I took twice as big a dose. Wouldn't I?' His smeary eyes came round at me with a sort of pounce, eagerly.
I wanted to look round and see how Halliday and the girl were taking this, but-I was afraid to lose his eye. That extra grain had fuddled him into speech. It was a blunder that might bring us on the truth.
'Of course you would, Joseph' (he looked gratified), 'and I don't blame you. Tell me, what's your whole name: all of it, you know?'
'You don't know that? Then you can't be a doctor-!'
He moved back a little, changed his mind, and said: 'You know it. Joseph Dennis.'
'Where do you live?'
'I know! You're a new doctor. That's it. I live at 401B Loughborough Road, Brixton.'
'Do you have any parents, Joseph?'
'There's Mrs. Sweeney-' he said doubtfully. 'Parents? I don't think so. I don't remember, except I never had enough to eat, much. All I remember is a little girl I was going to get married to, that lived in a house and had yellow hair, but I don't what happened to her, sir. There's Mrs. Sweeney. We were each of us only eight years old, though, so of course we couldn't.'
'How did you come to know Mr. Darworth?'
This question took more time. I gathered that Mrs. Sweeney was a guardian of his, who had known Mr. Darworth once. It was Mrs. Sweeney who told him he had great psychic powers. She went out one day and came back with Mr. Darworth 'in a coat with a fur collar on, and a shiny hat, and rode in a long car that had a stork on the bonnet.' They had talked about him, and somebody had said, 'He'll never blackmail.' Joseph thought this was three years ago.
Again - while Joseph was giving an involved description of the parlor at 401B Loughborough Road, with special reference to the bead curtains at the door and the gilt-clasped Bible on the table-I wanted to look round at my companions. How the acolytes would take this tolerably clear evidence about Darworth was uncertain: the difficulty might be in persuading him to repeat it afterwards. Besides, I could tell that he was nearly at the limit of his volubility. A few minutes more, and he would turn sullen and fearful, possibly savage. I pressed him on gently, thus:
'No, of course you needn't worry about what Mr. Darworth says, Joseph. The doctor'll tell him you took that medicine because you had to-'
'Ah-h!'
'-and the doctor'll tell him, naturally, you couldn't be expected to do what Mr. Darworth told you to do.... Let's see, old man: what was it he told you to do, now?'
Joseph put a grubby thumb-nail in his mouth and nibbled at it. He lowered his voice portentously, almost as though he were imitating Darworth. 'To listen, sir. To listen. That's what he said, please, sir.' Then Joseph nodded several times, and looked triumphant.
'Listen?'
'To listen to them. The people here. He said not to stay with them at all, and if they wanted a sitting to refuse it, but to keep listening. Please, sir, that's true. He said he wasn't sure, but that somebody might want to hurt him, and come creeping out. . . .' The boy's eyes grew more hazy; evidently Darworth had described that process of 'creeping out' with sharp and hideous detail. Also evidently, Darworth was no stranger to the medical use of hypnotic suggestion. 'Creeping out.... And I was to see who it was....'
'What then, Joseph?'
'He told me how good he had been to me, and the money he had given Mrs. Sweeney for me; and that my mind would know it, and if anybody did I should know who it was.... But I took my medicine, you see, sir, and then all I wanted to do was play cards. I don't understand the games, much, but I like to play cards. After a while the cards with the pictures on them all seem to come alive, especially the two red queens. You hold them to the light and turn them round, and then you can see new colors on them you didn't see before
'Did he expect anybody to come creeping out, Joseph?'
'He said--' The weak mind groped obscurely within itself. He had already turned round, and was picking up the cards and sorting them over in eager haste. A thin hand plucked out the queen of diamonds. As he looked up again, his eyes wandered past me.
'Please, sir, I won't talk any more,' he said in a sort of whine. He got up and backed away. 'You can beat me, if you like, the way they used to, but I won't talk any more.'
With a jerk he had slid past the packing case, holding the card jealously, and retreated into the shadows.
I turned round sharply. Marion Latimer and Halliday were standing close together, her hand on his arm: both of them staring at Joseph's white face writhing and retreating towards the wall. Halliday's eyes were heavy-lidded; his mouth showed either pity or contempt, and he held the girl closer. I thought that she shuddered, that relief had weakened her, that it was as though her eyes were growing accustomed to the light in here; even that her angular beauty had grown softer like the loosening in the sharp waves of her blonde hair. But, looking past them, I saw that the audience had been augmented.
There was a figure in the doorway.
'Indeed!' said Lady Benning harshly.
Her upper lip was pulled up. In contrast to the primness of the waved white hair and the black velvet band round her throat, her face was full of darkish wrinkles. The black eyes were on mine. She was leaning, incongruously, on an umbrella, and with this she abruptly made a gesture and struck the wall of the passage behind. 'Come into the front room, you,' she cried shrilly, 'and ask which one of us killed Roger Darworth. . . . Oh, my God, James! James!' said Lady Benning, and suddenly began to cry.
VIII
WHICH ONE OF FIVE?
IN THE front room I faced five people.
For the moment the most curious study was the self-assured old lady breaking to pieces like the wax-flower placidness of her face. It was as though she had tumbled down and could not get up: and there existed a very real
