The Reader Is Warned

'So,' he muttered, folding his arms. 'So!'

'It'd seem, sir,' interposed Masters, 'it'd seem we may have made a bit of a mistake about Mrs Constable.'

'Oh ? And that makes you still more dubious, hey ? If I'm so cocky about thinkin' I'm on the right track in this business, I got to explain how that mistake came to be made, haven't I ? I wonder if you can guess.'

'I don't want to guess; I want to know. That's to say, if you know.'

H. M. reflected.

'We'll round this up. Tell me, Masters: is it absolutely certain that Pennik's alibi for Sunday night is air-tight?' Masters nodded firmly.

'Not a doubt of it. He put up at the Black Swan, as he said he was going to. You remember that you and I went over there and tried to see him; but he got on his high and mighty horse and refused to see us.'

'Well?'

'Well, he arrived at the Black Swan at about nine o'clock. From that time on, until he went to bed at well past twelve, he was never out of the sight of at least two witnesses. Oh, ah! Did it deliberately, of course. He kept a group of them up on a little drinking party after the bar closed. They thought he was a bit touched in the head, and you can't blame 'em. Frothing at the mouth, and so on -'

'Did he do that?'

'He did. They even kept him in sight when he was making his telephone calls, though there was a lot of noise and he spoke low and they didn't hear what he was saying. However, from nine o'clock to well past twelve he's definitely got an alibi that can't be shaken.'

Masters paused. He drew a deep breath. Then his blood-pressure went up like a thermometer.

'I know it can't be shaken,' he repeated. 'The only trouble is that Dr Sanders here swears he saw Pennik prowling through Fourways at half-past eleven.'

There was a silence. H. M. looked round at Sanders.

'You're sure of that, son?'

Sanders nodded. On that rainy afternoon, even in the crowded and noisy restaurant, the atmosphere of the twilight house was back' again. He too well remembered the nose and five fingers pressed against that glass door to the conservatory, and Pennik's face behind.

'Yes. It was either Pennik or his ghost or his twin brother.'

'His ghost, maybe,' commented H. M. without inflexion or surprise. 'Sort of astral projection. I told you he was mustard.'

'Astral projection be blowed,' said Masters, going more red. 'Only - lummy! Are you telling me, sir, that he not only can polish people off without a mark left on their bodies, but he can send his ghost to do it for him? Are you telling me that?'

'Well, how do you explain it?'

'I don't,' said the chief inspector. 'Not yet. All I know is I'm going mad. I'm slowly going stark, staring, raving -'

'Now, now!' urged H. M., giving a deprecating look round over his spectacles, and turning back to Masters with a soothing air. 'Just keep you shirt on, and stop poundin' on that table. Be dignified. Like me. Ho, ho!' A ghoulish grin went over his face. 'I'm as dignified as even Squiffy could want. Eat your cheese and think of Marcus Aurelius. How's everything at home ? How's the kid ?'

Masters's face lit up.

'Survived the operation beautifully. Everything's fine, I'm glad to say. Mrs M's with her now. I've been running about a good bit -'

'Sure. So your brain won't work.'

'Much obliged, sir.'

'That's all right. Looky here. I'm trying to extract from you your meed of information. The last time I saw you, you had only one object. The last time I saw you, you were goin' bald-headed to find something out about Pennik. Have you found out anything about him?' Masters was himself again.

'Ah! I have, just a bit. Not much, but I'm grateful for anything.' 'Well?'

'Part of it I got from Mr Chase, and part of it by a piece of luck from the proprietor of the Black Swan Hotel.' Masters frowned. 'As you say, the trouble so far has been to find out something about Mr Ruddy Pennik, who he is or what he does or where he comes from. I saw Mr Chase yesterday. He seems to be the only person now remaining alive who knows anything at all about Pennik.'

H. M. opened his eyes.

'Very cheerin' thought, that is. I hope it comforts him.'

'As a matter of fact, sir, I - hurrum! - I asked Mr Chase 'whether he could manage to drop in here and see us to-day. I thought you might like to talk to him. But that's by the way. I thought of getting a line on Pennik through his universities. Which were Oxford and Heidelberg, according to Mr Chase. But Oxford doesn't know anything about him. And neither does Heidelberg, except that he took a degree there about fifteen years ago, with all kinds of honours for (stop a bit) metaphysics. He spelled his first name with two 'n's' then.'

'Did he, now?'

'The only other bit comes from the Black Swan. Now everybody, when they first meet Pennik, gets an idea that he's some sort of foreigner;, but they can't think why. I did myself, and hanged if I know why. The proprietor of the Black Swan thought so, too. He wanted Pennik to sign the foreign-visitors register. Pennik got annoyed, and said no, and pulled out a passport on the Union of South Africa. The proprietor was convinced, but he wasn't certain, so he jotted down the number of the passport on the q.t. Still, I thought it was worth while cabling to get a report, if possible, on the holder of that passport. Eh.'

H. M. grunted: 'Any reply?'

'No, I'm sorry to say.'

'And he scrapes through there too,' growled H.M. ‘Burn me, they won't leave any indications or hen-tracks, will they? Or - will they? Take Mrs Constable's murder, for instance. Even you will admit it was a murder now. We've just heard the story of the funny business from Sanders. I take it you've been all over the ground? Looked for the finger-prints and the stray cuff-links and what not?' 'Lord knows I have!'

'Yes. Find anything?'

‘No, sir, we did not find anything. We combed every inch of the room where that lady died, and every other inch of the place as well, and we got absolutely nothing. Fingerprints? Oh, ah! A whole crop of 'em. But then everybody had been through that place at one time or another.'

He bent forward earnestly, tapping the table with a knife.

'There was the poor lady lying in bed, in a nightgown and that pink dressing-gown, and the bedclothes kicked back. She'd undoubtedly put up a struggle, a real struggle, as the doctor will tell you ...'

H. M. looked up.

'Hold on! A physical struggle?'

The chief inspector hesitated, and looked at Sanders.

'I shouldn't have said so,' the latter replied, with a vivid vision of the bed and its occupant. 'There were no marks or bruises on her, in any case. I should have said a struggle in the sense of a hard seizure like the one she described her husband having had out in the hall before he died.'

There was a slight shiver in the overheated room.

'Yes; but,' argued H. M., 'keeping this to the physical plane, could anybody have got at her for a physical struggle?'

Sanders considered.

'The chief inspector and I have been arguing that It's remotely possible; but I doubt it. I last saw her alive at half-past eleven. I then locked up the room, locking the door to the bathroom and the door to the hall as I went out. After that I sat on the stairs for fifteen minutes. At a quarter to twelve I went downstairs - just as the telephone rang. I 'spoke to the newspapers and hurried back upstairs again within (I am sure) two or three minutes at the most.

'Now, this isn't a 'hermetically sealed room. The locks on those doors are very old-fashioned and could have been hocussed in half a dozen ways. For instance, somebody could have gone in through the bathroom door while I was sitting on the stairs outside the other door. Afterwards there are several ways by which the murderer could