Seeing is Believing

be long. Make yourself at home.'

The technique of making yourself at home under these conditions has not been denned by the best authorities.

Courtney, when the door had closed behind his companion, looked moodily round the room. He saw a brocaded chair, and rejected it. He tried to interest himself in the two or three pictures on the walls, but this floor also had its own creaks, and walking about produced them all as evidences of intrusion.

He could hear the ticking of the clock, and Vicky Fane's soft, steady breathing. She was attractive, right enough; but he thought he would be hanged if he let any woman land him in such a mess.

Between the windows stood a writing desk, scattered with Arthur Fane's possessions. A bank passbook lay neatly open, its pages held flat by a ruler. Courtney noted that Fane's current account at the Capital and Counties Bank contained the respectable total of twenty-two hundred pounds, and hastily averted his eyes. Wondering why anybody should keep so big a sum in a current account, when it might as well be out at interest, he stepped out through the full-length window on the balcony.

Two minutes later, the bedroom door softly opened.

Courtney, lost in the warm, grass-scented night, might not have heard this had it not been for the extreme furtiveness with which it was done — trying to avoid creaks and only succeeding in producing them.

He turned round.

A young woman with pale gold hair, and the sort of face favored by pre-Raphaelite painters, came in softly.

After a quick glance round the hall behind, she closed the door.

The mind of Philip Courtney, thirty-three and heart-whole, registered two things. First, that from the descriptions this must be Ann Browning, whom Sharpless had once designated as 'wishy-washy' but whose employer described as 'knowing a thing or two.' Second, that she was the most desirable object Philip Courtney had seen in those same thirty-three years.

He stared, and stared again.

Her white gown, plain and cut low, emphasized both her fragility and her desirability. She. glanced quickly round, making sure the.room was empty. Circling round the bed, which had its head against the wall opposite the windows, she went to a dressing table placed eater-cornered in the left-hand angle of the same wall.

Courtney, tongue-tied but on the point of giving an explosive cough, remained where he was.

Over the dressing table was a large round looking-glass. The light of the bedside lamp touched it, dimly reflecting Ann's flushed cheeks and her absorbed, furtive eyes. Her body shielded what she was doing at the dressing table, which seemed to consist in searching among toilet articles there. Courtney heard glass rattle, and a sound as of fumbling among hairpins in a tray.

Then the door to the hall opened again.

'Oh!' said Ann, and straightened up.

The man who entered seemed as startled as she was.

He released his hand slowly from the knob, while the clock ticked. Again from die descriptions — a John Bullish man with funny hair — Courtney placed him as Dr. Richard Rich.

'I hope I don't intrude?' he inquired politely, in a soft bass voice.

'Oh, no!' smiled Ann. Courtney saw her profile reflected side-ways in the mirror, the lift of the chin and the slim rounded neck. 'I thought I left my compact here, that's all. But it doesn't seem to be here.'

'You know,' smiled Rich, with the same meditative politeness, 'I've often thought that a compact was the best excuse ever provided to womankind. We men have nothing so good.' His tone changed. 'Miss Browning, do you honestly doubt that Mrs. Fane is under hypnosis?'

'I don't understand what you mean?' 'Give me the pin, please,' said Rich, extending his hand. 'Pin?'

'The pin you have in your hand.'

While Ann raised her eyebrows, he walked over and took it gently from her fingers. A faint expression of relief flashed over her face as he turned away.

Rich bent over the woman on the bed. Unfastening two small catches at her wrist, he rolled back the sleeve of the gown almost to her shoulder. Courtney saw the long pin gleam as he turned it against the light.

'Watch!' instructed Rich.

Taking up Vicky's limp left arm, he held the flesh taut with his left hand. With his right he pressed the point of the pin against it. Then with his thumb he drove the pin full to its head in Vicky's arm.

It seemed to Courtney that Ann was about to utter a cry. A curious flavor of evil seemed to cling round this whole scene, though the source of it began in mist. Yet no word, or cry, or movement of any kind came from Vicky, who continued to breathe in sleep. Delicately, with deft fingers, Rich withdrew the pin so that no trace of blood showed.

'Two hundred years ago,' he commented, 'that would have hanged her as a witch. Thank heavens we're less superstitious. Or are we?' He turned round, smiling. 'You'd better go downstairs, Miss Browning. I'm going to wake Mrs. Fane up. I don't relish the prospect, but…'

Ann walked over to the door.

'I really did come up here to get my compact,' she assured him — and went out.

If it had not been for Dr. Rich's next movement, Courtney would have ended his own acute discomfort by stepping in from the balcony. But again he stopped. For Rich locked the door.

The sharp click of the key was like an Omen. Rich, a red bar showing across his forehead, took one or two steps up and down the room. He seemed to be muttering to himself.

Then, drawing a deep breath, he went round the bed again to the dressing table side, where he bent over Vicky.

'Victoria Fane.'

No change or stir.

'Victoria Fane.' Whispering, the soft voice vibrated; it reached out into distances, and called beyond far doors.

'You hear me, Victoria Fane. You will not awake yet, but you hear me. Your mind is clear. You remember all the past, up to tonight. I wish to ask you something. You will answer me. You will speak nothing but the truth. Do you understand?'

The figure on the bed moaned.

Though a distinct sound, it was a mere whisper of the breath through her hps. Rich waited until the ticking of the clock seemed to have been lost in eternity.

'Victoria Fane, do you hate your husband?'

'Yes. No. Yes.'

The eyes remained closed; the lips still barely moved; yet the struggle had returned.

'Why do you hate your husband?'

'Because he killed someone.' '

Rich remained motionless, bent over, his hand partly supporting him on the tan quilted coverlet of the bed. His fingers closed into a fist.

'Whom did he kill?'

'A girl, Polly Allen. Here.'

At mention of the name, Rich's bunched fingers tightened still more, and then relaxed. 'Here? In this room?' 'No. Downstairs.'

'Where downstairs? In the back drawing room, was it?' 'Yes!'

'How did he kill her?'

'He strangled her.'

'Was it on the sofa he strangled her?'

'Yes!'

Again drawing a deep breath, Rich straightened up. He nodded to himself as though with enlightenment.

Courtney, it must be confessed, experienced something like a fit of the cold shivers. The commonplace well- to-do bedroom, like ten thousand other bedrooms in England, made a contrast for depths of violence: for ugly