The Judas Window

With some difficulty he hoisted himself to his feet. He went to the window, his cigar fuming, and scowled out at the clutter of roofs.

'But now -' continued H.M. soothingly. 'We got work to do. Ken, I want you to take a letter to Mary Hume in Grosvenor Street: Just get an answer yes or no, and come back straightaway. I want you to hear the afternoon sittin', because they're first going to put Randolph Fleming in the box, and I've got some very searchin' questions to put to him - about feathers. Fact is, if you will follow very closely the testimony that has been given and will be given in court, you'll see just where I want to get my witnesses, and why.'

'Any instructions?'

H.M. took the cigar out of his mouth and contemplated it. 'Well ... now. Considerin' that I don't want you to get into any trouble, no. Just say you're an associate of mine, and give the note I'll write for you to Mary Hume. If the little gal wants to talk about the case, go right ahead and talk, because your knowledge is pretty limited. If anyone else tackles you about it, let your tongue rattle freely, and it wouldn't do any harm to spread an atmosphere of mysterious disquiet. But don't mention the Judas window.'

It was all I could get out of him. He called for paper and an envelope; he scribbled a note at the table - and scaled it. The problem seemed to be one of words as well as facts, in those three words of the Judas window. When

I went downstairs I had a confused idea of thousands of houses and millions of rooms, piled into the rabbit warren of London: each respectable and lamp-lit in its long line of streets: and yet each containing a Judas window which only a murderer could see.

V

'Not an Ogre's Den'

THE taxi-driver who set me down before Number 12 Grosvenor Street eyed the house with interest. It was one of those narrow dun-coloured places in whose windows there are nowadays many To Let signs, set up from the street inside a little paved patch of yard with an iron railing round it. A narrow paved passage separated it from the house on the left. I went up the steps to the vestibule, out of a raw wind that was raking Grosvenor Street at the turn of the afternoon. The trim little maid who answered the door-bell began to close the door before the words were out of my mouth.

'Sorry-sir-can't-see-Miss-Hume-ill -'

'Will you tell her I have a message from Sir Henry Merrivale?'

The maid darted away, and the door wavered. She had neither invited me in nor closed it on me, so I went inside. In the hall a great grandfather clock looked at you with a no-nonsense air, and seemed to rustle rather than tick. By an agitation of draperies on an arch to the left you could follow the maid's flight. There was a slight throat- clearing inside, and Reginald Answell came out into the hall.

Seeing him now face to face, an earlier impression was confirmed. His long-jawed and saturnine good looks seemed to give him a darkish tinge which did not go well with his light hair. Under a long slope of forehead his eyes were a little sunken, but completely straightforward. Though subdued, he was not now bowed down by that thick humility-before-death he had shown on the stairs of the Old Bailey, and I judged that ordinarily he would be engaging enough.

'You're from Sir Henry Merrivale?' he asked.

'Yes.'

He lowered his voice and spoke with some intensity.

'Look here, old chap: Miss Hume is - not very well. I've just come round to see about it. I'm a - well, I'm a friend of the family, and certainly of hers. If you have any message, I could easily take it.'

'Sorry, but the message is for Miss Hume.'

He looked at me curiously, and then laughed. 'By gad, you lawyers are a suspicious lot! Look here, I really will give her the message, you know. This isn't an ogre's den or a -' He stopped.

'Still, I think it would be best to see her.'

At the rear of the hallway there was a sound of footsteps descending the stairs quickly. Mary Hume did not look ill. On the contrary, she looked strung up under a sort of hard docility which you could swear was assumed. The newspaper photograph had been surprisingly accurate. She had wide-spaced blue eyes, a short nose, and a plump chin: which features should not make for beauty, but in her they did. Her blonde hair was parted in the middle and drawn to a knot at the nape of the neck, but without an effect of curtness. She wore half-mourning, and displayed an engagement-ring.

'Did I hear you say you had a message from H.M.?' she asked without inflection.

'Miss Hume. Yes.'

Reginald Answell had begun to rummage in a hat-rack. His face appeared round the ring of hats with a smile of broad charm.

'Well, I'll be pushing off, Mary.'

'Thanks for everything,' she said.

'Oh, that's all right. Fair exchange,' he told her with jocularity. 'It's all agreed, though?'

'You know me, Reg.'

During this cryptic little exchange she had spoken in the same tone of affectionate docility. When he had nodded and gone out, closing the front door with considerable care, she took me to the room at the left. It was a quiet drawing-room, with a telephone on a table between the two windows, and a bright fire burning under the marble mantelpiece. She took the envelope, and went close to the fire to break the seal. When she had read the brief message inside, she dropped it carefully into the fire, turning her head from side to side to watch until each corner had burned. Then she looked back at me, and her eyes were shining.

'Just tell him yes,' she said. 'Yes, yes, yes! - No, please; just a moment; don't go. Were you in court this morning?'

'Yes.'

'Please sit down for a moment. Have a cigarette. In the box there.' She sat down on the broad low seat round the fender, and tucked one leg up under her. The firelight made her hair look more fluffy. 'Tell me, was it - pretty awful? How was he?'

And this time she did not refer to H.M. I said he was behaving very well.

'I knew he would. Are you on his side? Do have a cigarette, please do. There,' she urged. I offered her the box, and lit one for her. She had very delicate hands; they were trembling a little on the cigarette, which she held with both hands, and she looked up briefly over the match-flame. 'Did they prove very much? How would you have felt if you had been on the jury?'

'Not very much. Besides the opening speech, there were only two witnesses, because the examinations were fairly long. Miss Jordan and Dyer -'

'Oh, that's all right. Amelia,' said Mary Hume with practicality, 'doesn't really dislike Jimmy, because she's too obsessed with love's young dream; and she'd like him even better if she hadn't liked my father so much.'

She hesitated.

‘I - I've never been at the Old Bailey. Tell me, how do they act to the people who go as witnesses? I mean, do they go and yell in their ears, and storm and rave the way they do in the films?'

'They certainly do not. Miss Hume. Get that idea out of your head!'

'Not that it matters, really.' She looked sideways at the fire, and grew more calm. But a long puff of cigarette-smoke blew out against the flames, billowing back again, and she turned round once more. 'Look here, tell me the truth before God: he'll be all right, won't he?*

'Miss Hume, you can trust H.M. to take care of him.'

'I know. I do. You see, I was the one who went to H.M. in the first place. That was a month ago, when Jimmy's solicitor refused to have anything more to do with the case because he believed Jimmy was lying. I - I hadn't been keeping anything back deliberately,' she explained incomprehensibly, but evidently thinking I knew. 'It was only that I didn't know or guess. At first H.M. said he couldn't help me, and raved and thundered; and I'm afraid I wept a bit; and then he roared some more and said he'd do it. The trouble is, my evidence may help Jimmy a little; but it won't get him out of that awful business. And even now I haven't the remotest idea how H.M. intends to do it.' She paused. 'Have you?'

'Nobody ever does know,' I admitted. 'Honestly, the very fact that he's so quiet about it means that he's got