The Reader Is Warned

growing redder.

'Excuse me, Doctor,' he said soothingly. 'But are you feeling quite all right?'

'More or less.'

'Glad to hear it. Because for the life of me I don't understand what ails you. Lummy, don't you see you've explained the whole thing? What more do you want? - Let me see if I've got this straight. Mr Constable could have died from a blow to the body with a fist Or he could have died from a blow over the head with a blunt instrument. Or (hurrum!) somebody could have leaned out and said 'Boo!' to him. If you don't mind,' said Masters, with sceptical indulgence, 'we'll just be dignified and call that last one vagus inhibition of the heart. Anyhow, there are three ways to account for his death?'

'Yes.'

'Just so. And you believe he was deliberately murdered ?' 'I do.'

'Mind!' said the chief inspector, raising one finger. 'No decisions yet. We'll wait for the fact, my lad. But let's argue this. The old gentleman, Mr Constable, told his wife he was going down to dinner and walked out into the hall ?'

'Yes.'

'Between the time she spoke to him last, and the time she opened the door and saw him in a fit out in the hall - how long a time elapsed, now?'

'About a minute, she says.'

'About a minute. Did anybody else look out into the hall up to the time the lady screamed ?' 'No.'

'So he was a whole minute alone in the hall ?' 'Right.'

'Suppose,' pursued Masters, 'there'd been a murderer ' waiting for him out there. Suppose the murderer got him as he came out. Eh? Caught him to the body or over the head. Wouldn't there have been ample time for the murderer to have slipped away - down the stairs, or back into one of the bedrooms - before Mrs Constable looked out?'

'Ample time, I agree.'

'Then-?'

'You see,' Sanders explained, 'we are now entering the. narrows of the trouble. All this may be true. Take what theory you like. But even supposing it were true, how could you prove it?'

There was a silence. Masters started to get up, and started to speak; but he checked himself in both motions. His eyes grew fixed.

'Am I making myself clear?' inquired Sanders. 'The point is that there is nothing whatever to show how he died. It is possible that he might have died from a blow to the body or head, which in itself might have been caused by an accidental fall when he was alone. In either case, you have no grounds for saying that he did die like that. It might just as well have been a pure accident of nervous shock, again when he was alone. There is no realm more mysterious, more incalculable, or less understood than that same nervous shock you were making such fun of a minute ago. People have died from seeing a railway accident. From listening to a radio broadcast. From games and initiations. Even from thinking they were attacked when there wasn't a soul near. But, since we haven't the remotest notion of how Sam Constable did die, you will never be able to prove anything. - Masters, if this is murder, the murderer is perfectly safe from the law.'

Again there was a silence.

'But it's not reasonable!' protested Masters querulously.

'No. The only trouble is that it sometimes happens.'

'Well, sir, we'll have to see what we can do about it,' said Masters, with an attempt at cheerfulness. 'All the same, I'm bound to admit I don't like that lack-of-proof thing -'

'Oh, that's the least of your worries.'

Again the chief inspector started to speak; then he regarded his companion with some suspicion. 'Just a minute, Doctor. If I didn't know you so well, blow me if I wouldn't think there was something queer in all this! Are you sure you're not on a wild-goose chase? Murder? By everything you've told me, the whole thing could have been accidental death. Eh? Just so. Then why have you been stirring everybody up with the idea that Mr Constable didn't die naturally?'

'Because a mind-reader named Herman Pennik said he would die round about eight o'clock on Friday night,' answered Sanders. 'And I don't believe in mind-readers.'

Along the main road outside, where the sun was strengthening towards midday, a bus lumbered past at its Sunday gait. The bus stopped with a squealing of brakes, and Sanders glanced at his watch. Meantime, Chief Inspector Masters had been looking at him fixedly. After drawing a deep breath, the chief inspector got up and walked out of the room. Dr Sanders heard him speaking in the dulcet tones of one who wishes to cajole an idiot.

'Miss,' he was saying, 'is the bar open here on Sundays?'

An indignant female voice replied that it was.

'Ah!' said Masters. 'Two pints of bitter in here, miss, if you please.'

Mr Herman Pennik was at this moment getting down from the bus outside. Dr Sanders could not have said why he seemed so incongruous in that homely road on Sunday. Yet Sanders was oppressed by the same feeling that had troubled him ever since the death of Sam Constable: a feeling that with every hour Pennik's character was growing ‘ and emerging like a mango-tree under a cloth, stirring the dull cloth, sending out tentacles.

Chief Inspector Masters returned carrying two tankards of bitter. His air was one of elaborate off- handedness.

'Now, Doctor!' he said. 'By the way, seen anything of the old man recently? Sir Henry, I mean?' . 'He's coming down here this afternoon.'

'Is he, now? Does he know what you've just told me?'

'Not yet.'

'Ah!' said Masters, with a sudden unholy relish which could not altogether have applied to the beer. 'Knows nothing about it, then? Bit of a surprise for him, eh? Well, well, well! Well, here's all the best.'

'All the best. - And in the meantime there's someone else I'd like you to meet. He's here now. (Hoy! Mr Pennik! This way!) This,' Sanders went on, 'is Mr Masters, who is a chief inspector from Scotiand Yard. Masters, this is Mr Pennik, the thought-reading phenomenon I was telling you about. I sent for him to come here too.'

Masters's musing satisfaction had been short-lived. Putting down his tankard hastily, he gave Sanders a brief reproachful glare before he turned with his usual blandness to Pennik.

'Yes, sir? I didn't quite catch -?'

'I am what Dr Sanders calls the thought-reader,' said Pennik, his eyes never leaving the other's face. 'Dr Sanders told me you would be put in charge of the case.'

Masters shook his head.

'I'm afraid I'm not as yet, sir. So there's not much I could know about it, is there? However' - he became confidential - 'if you wouldn't mind giving me your own views, strictly sub-ju-de-cay and among ourselves, of course, I don't say it wouldn't help me a lot. Take this chair, sir. What'll you have to drink?'

(Watch out for him when he's in this mood.)

'Thank you,' said Pennik. 'I never drink. It is not that I have any objection to it; but it always upsets my stomach.'

'Ah! Lot of people'd be better off without it, I daresay,' declared Masters, surveying his tankard wisely. 'However! The trouble is, you see, that some people would say we haven't a case anyway. Be a bit awkward, wouldn't it, if we cut up a row and then found Mr Constable had died a natural death?'

Pennik frowned slightly, turning a pleasant but puzzled look towards Sanders. Yet again there was that suggestion of the mango-tree stirring under the dull cloth; and it was not pleasant.

'Dr Sanders cannot have told you much about the case,' he said. 'Of course it was not a natural death.' 'You believe that, too?' 'Naturally. I know it.' Masters chuckled.

'You know it, sir?' he inquired. 'Then perhaps you can even tell us who killed him?'

'Of course,' answered Pennik, lifting one hand to touch himself lightly on the chest, 'I killed him.'