The Reader Is Warned

for the proper time. It wasn't likely Sanders would sit up all night with Mrs Constable; and he didn't.

'Mrs Constable was only half drugged, and put up some-thin' of a struggle. But Joe Keen's daughter knew how to deal with that: you saw what she was goin' to do with her stepmother. Everything went slick as goose- grease until just after the murder. She'd got her victim out of the tub; dried her. and put on her nightgown; when all of a sudden she realized something. Up to then she hadn't made a sound to betray herself - but what about that water runnin' out, in a downstairs pipe that somebody on the floor below was almost certain to hear?

'She had to know. She went down the main staircase, into the kitchen by the hall door without touching the dining-room, through the kitchen door to the conservatory, and looked into the dining-room as Pennik's astral projection. Never mind that astral bit now I' said H. M., raising his hand. 'She didn't mean the picture of Pennik to be seen -not then.

'But it was seen; Sanders didn't pay much attention to the runnin' water, but he did jump when he caught a flash of Pennik's face. And she knew she .had to act quick. It was certain Sanders would go up straightaway to see whether Mrs Constable was all right If he found Mrs Constable dead then, the whole game was up. It wasn't a question of explaining her own presence in the house, for which she

might have found some coy excuse. But she'd left her properties all over the place: the candles in the bathroom, the extra electric fire hooked in to do the dirty; the tub still damp and the fuse still blown. If the body were discovered before she could dispose of the evidence, die whole myth of Teleforce would be exploded then and there.

'Well, she managed it. She made no sound: you've seen how light on her feet she is, and it's ducats to an old shoe she was in her stocking feet then. When Sanders saw her through the conservatory door, she nipped across the room, opened the conservatory window from inside, got out, and went back upstairs again by the outside balcony - while he was searching the conservatory. She pushed Mina Constable's body under the bed, put on the dressing-gown, and crawled into bed with her head under a pillow in the way Mina always slept.

'He couldn't have turned on the light if he'd wanted to, because the fuse was blown. In the very huge relief of findin' a woman alive, he wouldn't be likely to investigate close; and he wouldn't be likely to look past the closed door of the bathroom. He didn't.

'The interval while he was on the stairs she spent quietly playin' possum. She enjoyed all this, y'know: it was excitin': it stimulated her excess of thyroid. When she heard him go downstairs she put Mina Constable asprawl on the bed, and repaired the lights with one of the extra fuses: a matter of a couple of minutes. She opened the bathroom door, which he'd locked on the inside, slipped into the bathroom, closed the door as though it were still locked, and gathered up her properties.

'Afterwards was the real audacity of the business. I didn't work this out for myself: you'll have gathered it from the screamin’ she did at us when we walked in on her at her stepmother's-'

'Never mind,' said Sanders quickly.

'Go on, sir,’ grunted Masters. 'I think I know what you mean.'

'The wench actually stayed in that house all night. In the

general confusion after findin' Mrs Constable dead, Sanders couldn't be everywhere at once. He was only one man. He had to telephone. He had to get the police; and it was unlikely the police would get there before morning. He even had to sleep at one time or another. So she repaired all her little omissions. At one point she nipped back into the now-open room and locked the bathroom door again on the bedroom side. At another she returned the burnt-out heater to an unused room on the top floor. It was a game of hide-and-seek; and she liked it. At half-past five in the cool dawn she slipped out of the house carryin' her trim little suitcase, walked along the road, caught the early bus to Guildford and the early train to town; after which she appeared fresh-, eyed and dignified at the office, a cat back from the tiles and a saint in its niche again. That's all.

'So that was my dawnin' conviction about her and her character on Tuesday. But Pennik was still in the background, elusive and perplexin'. Was she working with Pennik? There seemed to be evidence for it. And yet I couldn't believe it. Havin' seen Pennik on Monday night, I was gatherin' a few cloudy ideas about him while I sat at the Corinthian grill room. There's such a thing as psychological truth, gents; and, burn me, I could not see him as anything but a feller who believed in what he said. You've felt that, Masters. So have you, son. I defy anybody to talk to Pennik for five minutes and still think he's party to any plot. I told you over and over he was the lone wolf. I told you that, within his limits, he was a perfectly honest man.

'Before I'd even met him, I'd got a bit of a notion about the African ancestry, from makin' an excuse to get a look at those little blue half-moons at the base of his finger-nails. Which was all the more reason for wantin' to find out what made him tick. I had to break him down. There was only one way to do that: Mrs Constable suggested it to me on Sunday. If I could get him locked up for a month or two? Yes. And the only way to do that was to start such a roar of publicity that the plain Briton would arise in all his majesty, saying: 'To hell with common sense; stick him in clink.' So the old wangler,' explained H. M., suddenly rubbing his hands together with a ghoulish expression of pleasure; 'started' wanglin' again. I wasn't really loopy, Masters. Honest I wasn't.

'For the truth of everything shone out at that lunch-table on Tuesday, when we three sat there with Hilary Keen and Pennik. I'd just gone through a spiritual abyss of wantin' to know why. I was sure Joe Keen's daughter was up to games. I was sure Pennik wasn't up to games in the practical sense. But whether they worked together or whether they didn't, why, why should Joe Keen's daughter kill Mrs Constable?' Surely not just to bolster up a belief in Teleforce?

'You know the answer. Mrs Constable could have exposed Pennik. What's more, she would have. Several times ‘ she'd already been within an ace of breakin' down and blurtin' out everything; you saw that. If it had happened again, if someone else died and Pennik claimed the, credit for the second time, Mina Constable would have blown the whole sham higher than Boney's kite. So Hilary had to kill her before Pennik's triumphal progress could go on. The name of the real victim, the intended victim, Mrs. Cynthia Keen, was as plain as though somebody had said it aloud over the table. Do you remember how curtly and finally Hilary cut off the conversation when Masters started asking questions about the possible victim and Pennik, in expansive mood, was within two steps and a whisde of telling ,him? I had got it. I had found Frau Frankenstein.

'And glorious was the thought, We've got 'em both now. D'ye see? Let Pennik go to Paris and give his speech. Let the : gal try to make Teleforce work again; when she does, we'll nail her flat with all the evidence we couldn't get otherwise. At the same time, keep Pennik away from that inquest;, let the honest jury return a verdict against him; arrest him as soon as he makes his speech, break him down and make him admit the real truth; and with one double-barrelled shot we bring 'em both down at once.

'Only-'

'I interfered,' muttered Sanders. 'And I challenged Pennik.'

'Son, I could have murdered you myself,' said H. M. 'You made Hilary as sick as you made me. For it wouldn't be any good to her if Pennik reared up and said, 'Sanders dies.' As I told you, she was workin' her head off to keep him from turnin' on you. She was prayin' for that. The atmosphere at the lunch-table was impregnated with it. .

'She had to stop it somehow. I only hoped she would. We might break the Teleforce bogey if Pennik said, 'Sanders dies,' and Sanders didn't die; but that wouldn't help us catch the real murderer. While my hopes shrank, I had to go after another line of attack. First, now I was convinced electric heaters had been used for die dirty work, to find some evidence of it. The heaters themselves were no good. I couldn't very well wave a burnt-out fire and say, 'Hoy! This heater won't work; and that proves it was used to kill people with.' The scrap-book was a better lead. I could 'a' sworn. Mrs Constable had hidden it, and that Joe Keen's daughter didn't know anything about it: she had pieced together the game, as you heard her say, by hearin' Mina Constable talk in her sleep. Thinkm' about electricity in general, it suddenly occurred to me what an uncommon fine place to hide a book a fuse-box would be. But in that case Hilary Keen would have known about the book. She did: and she left it behind because it was no betrayal of her-and, 1 groan to say, no good to us.

'That left my second line of attack: to get Pennik snaffled by the jury at the inquest. But to get the verdict in his absence, so he wouldn't be arrested until after he'd made his Paris speech.

'What we had to guard against was that Pennik might show up at the inquest, as he swore he would. He might try to do it in spite of knowin' he wouldn't be admitted. In that case we'd have to arrest him on the spot, and that would be bad. For the whole point of the secret inquest behind locked doors was that, in case we got the- verdict we hoped for, no word should get back to Hilary Keen that Pennik had been arrested or was goin' to be arrested. We could keep it from the press; we could even detain the jury until it was too late to make any