something up his sleeve.'
She gestured. 'Oh, I suppose so. But I can't feel easy about something I don't know. What good is it just to say everything will be all right?'
She spoke with great intensity. Getting up from the fireside seat, she walked round the room with her shoulders hunched and her hands clasped together as though she were cold.
'When I told him as much as I knew,' she went on, 'the only two things that seemed to interest him at all were things that simply made no sense. One was something about a 'Judas Window'' - she sat down again -'and the other was about Uncle Spencer's best golf-suit.'
'Your uncle's golf-suit? What about it?'
'It's gone,' said Mary Hume.
I blinked. She made the statement as though it ought to convey something. My instructions were to discuss the case if she offered to do so, but here there was nothing to do but apply the spur of silence.
'It ought to have been hanging up in the cupboard, and it wasn't: though,' said the girl, 'I can
I could quite agree with that If H.M.'s defence in some fashion depended on a Judas Window, a golf-suit, and an ink-pad, it must be a very curious defence indeed.
'That is, the ink-pad in the pocket of the suit, that Mr Fleming was so keen to get. I -I hoped you'd know something. But the fact is that both the suit and the ink-pad have gone. Oh, my God, I didn't know there was anyone in the house I'
The last words were spoken so low that I barely heard them. She got up, throwing her cigarette into the fire; and an instant later she was a composed, docile hostess turning on her guest a face as blank as a dumpling. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw Dr Spencer Hume had come in.
His tread was brisk but subdued, as though it became the situation. Dr Hume's round face, with its well- brushed hair having a parting that must have been a quarter of an inch wide, showed domestic worry as well as sympathy. His rather protuberant eyes - like those in the pictures of his dead brother - passed incuriously over me, and seemed to study the room.
'Hello, my dear,' he said lightly. 'Have you seen my eye-glasses anywhere?'
'No, uncle. I'm sure they're not here.'
Dr Hume pinched his chin. He went over and looked at the table, and then on the mantelpiece; finally he stood at a loss, and his glance towards me was more interrogative.
'This is a friend of mine, Uncle Spencer.’ ‘Mr Blake,' I said.
'How do you do?' said Dr Hume without inflection. 'I seem to recognize your face, Mr Blake. Haven't we met somewhere before?'
'Yes, your face is familiar, too, doctor.'
'Perhaps at the trial this morning,' he suggested. He shook his head, and glanced meaningly at the girl; you would never have recognized in her the vital personality of a few minutes ago. 'A bad business, Mr Blake. Don't keep Mary too long, will you?'
She spoke quickly. 'How is the trial going, Uncle Spencer?'
'As well as can be expected, my dear. Unfortunately' -I was to learn that he had a trick of beginning speeches with a hopeful assertion, and then saying 'Unfortunately' with knitted brows - 'unfortunately, I'm afraid there can be only one verdict. Of course, if Merrivale knows his job properly, he'll have medical evidence there to prove insanity beyond any doubt. Unfortunately - by Jove, yes! I remember where I've seen you now, Mr Blake I I think I noticed you talking to Sir Henry's secretary in the hall of the Old Bailey?'
'Sir Henry and I have been associates for a good many years, Dr Hume,' I said truthfully.
He looked interested. 'You are not appearing in the case, though?'
'No.'
'H'm, yes. May I ask (strictly between ourselves) what you think of this unfortunate business?'
'Oh, he'll be acquitted undoubtedly.'
There was a silence. Only the firelight illumined this room; the day had turned black and windy. What effect I was having in pursuing my instructions to 'spread a little mysterious disquiet' I could not tell. But Dr Hume thoughtlessly took a pair of black-ribboned eye-glasses out of his waistcoat pocket, fitted them on his nose with some care, and looked at me.
'Guilty but insane, you mean?'
'Sane and not guilty.'
'But that's preposterous I Utterly preposterous! The boy is mad. Why, his evidence about the whisky alone -I beg your pardon; I suppose I really shouldn't be discussing this. I believe they expect to call me as a witness this afternoon. By the way, I always had an impression that witnesses were herded together and kept under surveillance like jurymen; but I learn that this is so only in some cases. The prosecution does not think this is one of them, considering that the - er - issue is so clear.'
'If you're a witness for the prosecution, Uncle Spencer,' said the girl, 'will they let you say Jimmy is crazy?'
'Probably not, my dear; but I shall manage to suggest it I owe you that much, at least.' Again he looked at me meaningly. 'Now see here, Mr Blake. I quite appreciate your position. I know you want to give Mary all the comfort you can, and keep her spirits up at a time of great trial. But to encourage false hopes is - confound it, sir, it's heartless! That's what I said: heartless, and there's no other word for it. Just remember, Mary, that your poor old father is lying out there, dead and murdered and under ground; and that will be all the support you need.' He allowed a pause, after which he consulted his watch. 'I must be getting on,' he added briskly.' 'Time and tide wait for no man,' as they say. Er - by the way, Mary, did I understand you to be talking some nonsense about my brown tweed suit, that old suit?'
She was sitting on the fender-seat, her hands clasped round her knees. Now she looked up briefly.
'It was a very good suit, Uncle Spencer. It cost twelve guineas. And you want to get it back, don't you?'
He regarded her with concern. 'Now there, Mary, is a fine example of the way people will catch at trifles at a time of - of bereavement! Good Lord, my dear, why are you so concerned over that suit? I've told you I sent it to the cleaner's. Naturally, afterwards, I was not concerned with an old golf-suit when there were so many other things to think of! I simply neglected to call for it, and it's still at the cleaner's, so far as I know.'
'Oh! '
'You understand that, do you, my dear?'
‘Yes,' she said. 'Did you send it to the cleaner's with the ink-pad and the rubber stamps still in the pocket? And what about the Turkish slippers?'
There would seem nothing in this calculated to disturb anyone, though it was not very intelligible. But Dr Hume removed his eye-glasses and put them back into his pocket At the same time. I noticed that the draperies at the doorway had stirred, and a man was looking through. The light was not strong enough to see him well: he appeared to be a thin man with white hair and a nondescript face: but one hand was holding to a fold of the curtain, and seemed to be twisting it.
‘I suppose I must have done so, my dear,' said Dr Hume, in such an altered voice that it was like the sudden grip of that hand on the curtain. Yet he was trying to speak lightly. ‘I shouldn't trouble about it, if I were you. They are honest people, these cleaners. Well, well, I must be getting along. Er -? Oh, I beg your pardon. This is Dr Tregannon, a friend of mine.' 1
The man in the doorway dropped his hand and bowed slightly.
'Dr Tregannon is a mental specialist,' explained the other, smiling. 'Well, I still must be getting along. Good day, Mr Blake. Don't stuff up Mary's head with nonsense, and don't let her do the same thing to you. Try to get some sleep this afternoon, my dear. I'll give you some medicine to-night, and it will make you forget all your troubles. 'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,' doesn't Shakespeare say? Yes. Quite so. Good day.'
VI
THE man in the witness-box of Court-room Number One, Central Criminal Court, had a large and confident voice. He was in the middle of a sentence when I came creeping in.
‘and so, of course, I thought of the ink-pad. Like 'precautions to take before the doctor comes', you know. Only this was a policeman.'
