The Reader Is Warned

slide, it comes from knowin' what he thinks. Well, let's hear the mournful numbers. What do we think?'

After looking round cautiously, Masters closed the door. Then he talked at Sanders.

'That Mrs Constable deliberately murdered her husband, by some trick we haven't dropped to yet. Ah, and I'll tell you something else. I haven't read any of the lady's books (no fear). But my wife has: all of 'em, and she told me a thing or two before I left home. In one of the books, about an Egyptian expedition, a whole string of people were supposed to die from a curse on the Pharaoh's tomb; and it turned out that they were really polished off by some ruddy clever use of carbon-monoxide gas. My wife couldn't remember exactly how the thing worked, but she said it sounded all right and you could do it at home, so she wondered whether it would work in case she ever wanted to polish me off.'

Sanders shrugged his shoulders.

'All right, admit that,' he said. 'And in The Double Alibi she had the victim die from a hypodermic injection of insulin. Which is a hair-raiser, because it's scientifically sound and very nearly undetectable. I remember I said something about it to her on Friday evening. But what of that? Constable didn't die from carbon monoxide or insulin. What does it prove ?'

'It proves my point,' declared Masters, tapping his finger into his palm, 'that a trick like this, whatever in blazes it is, would be straight up her street. If she ever set out to polish somebody off, that's just exactly how she'd go about it. Something as wild as wind and yet as domestic as cheese.

Something you could do in your own home with two thimbles and a tablet of soap; and no special knowledge required.'

(It was at this point that an extraordinary change went over H. M.'s face. It was exactly as though he were setting and puffing out his features to deliver a resounding raspberry, but it faded off into excited wonder.)

'Oh, my eye!' he muttered’

'Sir?'

'Never mind, son. I was cogitatin'.' Masters turned round on him with deepest and darkest suspicion.

'I tell you I was cogitatin'!' insisted H. M. 'Go on. What I was thinkin' about don't affect your case. I was only thinkin' about the spots of candle-grease on the carpet, and exactly where they were. Burn me, Masters, why do you always think I'm tryin' to do you in the eye?'

'Because usually you are,' said the chief inspector, briefly. 'Now see here, sir -'

'Go on with your case,' said Sanders. 'How does Pennik fit into it?'

'Isn't it clear as daylight, Doctor? Pennik knew about it, or guessed about it. He knew when she was going to do it, and why she was going to do it. So when it happened he simply used it to strengthen and bolster up his ruddy hocus-pocus of murder by telepathy. Mind you, he didn't commit himself too far by saying too much before it happened. He only said it might happen. Then it did happen; and for the first time he came out boldly and swore he did it. Eh? I'm pretty sure he wasn't in cahoots with her over it.’ He only used her. That's why she's so blinking wild and bitter against him now. That much of her carryings-on I'll admit

‘In looking over my notes of this case, even now I am struck with the number of suggestions that were made about various people working as somebody else's accomplice. It will, perhaps, allow better concentration if I state here that the murderer in this case worked entirely alone, and had no confederate who either knew the murderer's plan or rendered material assistance in any way. The reader is warned. - J. S.

as genuine and sincere. Here's Pennik going about saying he did it, whereas she has thumping good reason to know he didn't do it. I ask you straight:, doesn't that explain all the inconsistencies we've got on our hands ?'

'It does if she's loopy,' said H. M.

'I don't follow that.'

'Oh, Masters, my son! Wouldn't you call it just a little bit too conscientious? Does she get as mad at him as all that just because he walks in and assumes all the blame for her own crime?'

Masters brooded. 'I'm not so sure, sir. Might be the best kind of bluff.'

'It might be. It might fit; in which case her 'challenge' is pure bluff. It's a good case, apart from the triflin' fact that we couldn't prove it even if we knew it was true. All I know is that parts of it are true. They must be; and in spite of your worryin', son,' - he looked malevolently at Sanders - 'that woman is as safe here to-night as though we'd got her packed in cotton-wool in the middle of the Bank of England. Now we got to be off, or we'll make Joe Keen's daughter miss her train. Goo'-night, son. Come on, Masters.'

Dr Sanders stood in the doorway at Fourways and watched the tail-light of the police-car vanish among the trees. It was chillier now. He looked for a moment at the clear starlight over the trees. Then he went inside, where he closed, locked, and bolted the front door. He was alone in the house with a quiet, pleasant little woman whom two of his colleagues believed to be a murderess. This made him smile. He was also alone with what was to prove one of the worst nights of his life.

CHAPTER XII

His first sensation, as he remembered afterwards, was one of freedom and almost of cheerfulness.

He could settle down to read, or to consider his own personal problems, in the luxuriance of being alone. Maybe he ought not to leave all these lights blazing in somebody else's house, but they suited his mood and he did not feel of an economical turn. Remarkable, though, how wiry and receptive your nerves and ears and even eyes seemed to become under the mere weight of silence. Everything looked just a little larger and sharper than life. Everything, from the fall of your shoe on unglazed tiles to the brushing of your sleeve across the leaves of a potted palm, seemed to have a clarity of sound which shook like a note in music.

He went into the drawing-room, where the polished oak floor was even more noisy. It was growing definitely cold here, so he closed the long window. As an afterthought he went back and locked it. All the windows on this floor stretched to the ground, it occurred to him: were they all locked? When you came to consider it, such houses were nothing more than a series of open arches.

Wandering into the dining-room, he considered the great dark pictures and the massive plate on the sideboard. There was a half-finished flagon of beer in the sideboard, he remembered. He brought it out, put it down on the table with what seemed a very loud bump, and went to fetch a glass from a deep china-closet which showed him, unexpectedly, his own reflection in a mirror inside. He also brought a china ash-tray from the sideboard, an ash-tray which rattled and clattered and perversely bumped up against something whenever you put ash in it.

The beer, warmish, frothed a good deal. With patient effort he filled the glass, lighted a cigarette, and sat down beside the big round table to consider.

It might be interesting one day to write a monograph on the medical aspects of the emotion called fear. It had been treated before, of course; but not until he sorted out facts for his little report to Masters had he realized the depths and mists in that field called nervous shock. It was a new territory, almost a new quicksand. Several persons here 'had suffered from it, including Hilary. And - come to think of it - he had not yet learned what Hilary saw. Taking a more concrete example, let us suppose that Sam Constable had died of nervous shock as the result of something seen or heard or prepared for that purpose.

Behind him, the swing-door to the kitchen creaked' and cracked sharply.

He did not jump up, as-his impulse was. He waited for the fraction of a second, and then glanced back casually over his shoulder.

He saw nothing, knowing that he should see nothing. That jump, for which he felt annoyed, had been caused by the mere sudden movement of an inanimate thing. Draughts or contraction of wood or whatever the cause, it is the small stir of the inanimate which brushes nerves the wrong way. He noticed that the kitchen was dark; also dark was the conservatory, which he could see through a closed glass door.

But it was not the best time, probably, for analysing the nature of nerves. Better be up and doing something. Better go up and see how Mina Constable was getting on.

Extinguishing his cigarette, he finished the beer and went upstairs. When he knocked at the door of her room he received no answer, nor did he expect one; the morphia would have done its work by that time. He opened the door very softly and looked in.

Mina's bed was empty.

The bedclothes were thrown back in some disarray, showing a sort of throat of crisp white sheets which shone in the light of the bedside lamp. Pillows were punched into confusion; and a dressing-gown and slippers,