The Reader Is Warned

'Oh, all right.' Chase started to speak, and then seemed to change his mind. 'Anyway, we might just as well stop talking about them in their own house.' Again he hesitated. 'Look here, Sanders, it's no good denying that bout of malaria changed him a bit, and Mina too. He snaps sometimes, though you can't help liking him. I don't know whether I want this mind-reading fellow to be proved a fake or the real thing. He's Mina's discovery, and she seems to think a lot of him; though I've sometimes wondered if it isn't her sense of humour working. Sam doesn't like him, and there's a kind of undeclared row hovering and darkening. The point is, will you and the notorious H. M. do your best for us?'

CHAPTER II

Sanders was almost himself again. He felt enormously flattered and, for the first time in weeks, cheered.

‘Of course. But-'

‘But what?'

'You seem to have got the wrong idea of me, I'm afraid. I'm not a detective. My work is forensic medicine. I don't see how anything I know or could investigate would apply to this man. At the same time -'

‘Cautious blighter,' Chase explained to Hilary.

'At the same time, it's hard to say what particular branch of science or pseudo-science would apply to him if he were genuine. What is his science? By what rule does he work, or pretend to work?'

'I don't think I understand, old boy.'

‘Well, most of the 'mind-readers' I ever encountered have been of the music-hall variety. You know the sort of thing: working in pairs. The woman sits blindfolded, the man goes among the audience. 'What am I holding in my hand?' 'and so on. Then, of course, there's the fellow who works alone, makes you write questions on bits of paper, and reads them from a sealed envelope; but he is usually such an obvious fake that if you have an elementary knowledge of conjuring you can spot him. If he's like either of those two sorts, I can help you. Is he?'

'Good Lord, no!' said Chase, staring.

‘Why the vehemence?'

Hilary Keen made a wry face. 'What Larry means,' she explained, 'is that he's no end of an academic swell. Degrees from all over the place. I'm not necessarily impressed by that, but it's no good denying it carries some weight with regard to his sincerity. - Besides, he's nothing like the sort you describe.'

'Then what does he do? That is to say, he doesn't just look you in the eye and say, 'You are thinking of a bathing-hut on the beach at Southend,' does he?'

'I'm afraid he does,' answered Hilary.

It was growing darker, a powdery twilight in which the palms of the conservatory became weights of shadow and the orange-red square of the fire stood out with fierce distinctness. Even so, they must have seen the expression on Sanders's face. '

'Aha!' said Chase, nodding with great profundity. 'Shakes you up, does it? Why?'

'Because it's incredible. If s scientific gibberish.' Sanders hesitated. 'I won't deny that in the past there have been certain fairly successful experiments in telepathy. William James believed in it, for instance. So did Hegel and Schelling and Schopenhauer, though recently it has died down from sheer lack of investigation. The trouble is that nothing can be regarded as a scientific fact which won't work at will and all the time, on the same recurring principles; and more often than not telepathy hasn't worked at all. If the operator complains that he is not in the mood, or that 'conditions aren't right', he may be honest, but he's not being scientific. - Who is this man, by the way? What do you know about him?'

There was a brooding pause before Hilary replied.

'Nothing, really. Except that he's apparently quite well off and doesn't stand to gain a penny by any of this. Mina met him on her way back from this trip to Indo-China. He calls himself a student.'

'A student of what?'

'Of thought as a force. You must get him to explain. And yet all the time,' said Hilary, her soft voice tautening and sharpening, 'I've got a feeling that there's something not quite right about him. I don't mean as regards his being a fake; but something at the back of his own mind. Worry? Self-consciousness? Inferiority complex? You have a feeling that he regards this thought-reading as only a kind of minor prelude to something - Oh, I don't know! Talk to him; that is, if he will'

'I should be only too pleased,' said a new voice.

There was a rustle in the strip of grass outside the conservatory. Twilight touched the stained-glass above, and the long pale oblong of the open window below; and a man moved into that oblong.

The light was not strong enough to make out more than outlines. The newcomer was rather under middle height, with a broad chest, and legs very slightly bowed. You felt rather than saw a smile as he inclined his head. His voice was heavy, slow-speaking, and pleasant.

'Lights. We'd better get some lights on,' Chase said hastily - and Sanders could have sworn that in the way he spoke there was a touch of panic.

He went over and pressed a switch. Under each corner of the glass dome, a cluster of electric globes bloomed like luminous fruit. They had the garish and snaky appearance of such fixtures popular at the end of the nineteenth century; they brought out the garishness of gilt and palms and coloured glass.

'Thank you,' said the newcomer. 'Dr Sanders?'

'Yes. Mr-?'

'Pennik,' said the newcomer. 'Herman Pennik.'

He extended his hand. You would not have found a more unobtrusive or disarming figure than Mr Herman Pennik, despite the curious momentary impression gained from his appearance at the window. He scraped the soles of his shoes carefully on the window-sill to avoid bringing mud into the room. Before shaking hands he even glanced over his shoulder, down at the soles of his shoes as he tilted them up, to make sure.

His age might have been the middle forties. He had a hard-looking head with homely-looking sandy hair; a broad, homely face with leathery wrinkles round the jaw, darkish from hot suns; a broad nose, and light eyes under sandy brows. You saw no sign of strong intellect in that face. There was even a touch of heaviness or coarseness round the mouth. But Herman Pennik had a habit of being incon-spicuous in many things.

He spoke apologetically, with a slight ducking motion of the shoulders.

'How do you do, sir? I am sorry. I could not help overhearing what was said.'

Sanders returned his formal courtesy.

'I hope I was not too frank, Mr Pennik. You don't mind?'

'Not at all. You understand, I hardly know why I am here myself, not being much endowed with the social graces. But Mrs Constable wished me to come, and here I am.'

He smiled; and Sanders felt the pull of a curious psychological reaction. In spite of righting against it, the very reputation Pennik had created for himself made Sanders uneasy. It surrounded Pennik like an aura; it had to be shaken off; it was formidable and disturbing. It prompted the insidious thought: What if this fellow can read my mind ? For there was certainly a change in the atmosphere,

'Shall we sit down ?' Pennik suggested suddenly. 'Couldn't I get you a chair, Miss Keen? Wouldn't you be more comfortable than sitting on the rim of that fountain?'

'I'm quite comfortable, thanks.'

·You're - er - quite sure ?'

'Quite sure, thank you.' t

Though she smiled, Sanders felt that she also sensed another quality about Mr Herman Pennik. His manner underwent a change when he spoke to her; his words were clumsy; he had the air of an embarrassed small boy; and afterwards he sat down hastily in a wicker chair.

Immediately he was easy again, though Sanders noticed that he took a deep breath.

'We were just telling the doctor,' began Lawrence Chase, tall and lean and now revealed as going a trifle bald, 'about some of the things you've done.'

Pennik made a deprecating gesture.

'Thank you, Mr Chase. And did he seem - responsive?'

'To tell you the truth, I think he was a little shocked.' ' Indeed? May I ask, sir, why you should be shocked?'