Seeing is Believing

'Dr. Rich,' said Ann with cruel clearness, 'I don't know how many people you've killed, through carelessness, in the course of your professional career. But you killed Vicky Fane last night. She's dying, do you hear? Dying.'

Rich appeared to be staring back at them through the distorting moonlight.

'What in the name of sanity are you talking about?'

'Steady, Ann!' said Courtney. He put his arm round her shoulders tightly. All her body seemed to droop. 'Doctor, do you remember showing Mrs. Fane was really hypnotized by driving a pin into her arm?'

'Yes? Well?'

'Tetanus. The doctors are upstairs with her now.'

There was a pause, while they heard him draw in his breath. Then Rich's bass voice hit back like a blow of commonsense directness, with fear behind it.

'That's impossible!'

'Don't take my word for it. Go in and see.'

'I tell you it's impossible! The pin was perfectly clean. Besides—'

Rich pulled the brim of his hat still further down. After a pause, during which his mouth seemed to be working, he turned round and started for die house. They followed him. The front door was on the latch, and a light burned in the hall. Rich's mottled pallor was still further revealed as he removed his hat.

'May I go upstairs?'

'I doubt if they'd let you in. The doctors are there, and a man from Scotland Yard.'

Rich hesitated. There was a light in the library, at the front and to their left. Motioning to the others to precede him, Rich went in and closed the door.

This library, you felt, was seldom used. It had a correct air of weightiness: a claw-footed desk, a globe-map, and an overmantel of heavy carved wood. The books, clearly bought by the yard and unread, occupied two walls: in their contrasts of brown, red, blue, and black leather or cloth among the sets, even in an occasional artistic gap along the shelves, they showed the hand of the decorator. A bronze lamp burned on the desk.

'Now,' Rich said through his teeth. 'Please tell me the symptoms.'

Courtney told him.

'And these symptoms came on when?'

'Just before tea-time, I understand.'

'God in heaven!' muttered Rich, as though unable to believe his ears. He massaged his forehead, and then hastily consulted his watch. 'Sixteen hours! Only sixteen hours! I can't believe it would have got as bad as that in only…'

His voice grew bewildered, almost piteous.

'I forget,' he added. 'I have not practiced medicine for eight years. Your knowledge grows scrambled. You…' His eyes wandered round the bookshelves. 'I don't suppose they'd have any medical works here? Stop. There's a Britannica, at least. It might help to jog my memory.'

The set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, fourteenth edition, was on a rather high shelf. Rich stood on tiptoe and plucked down the twenty-first volume, 'SORD to TEXT.' He carried it to the desk under the lamp. His hands shook. But it was unnecessary for him to leaf through in order to find the article on tetanus.

An envelope, used as a book-mark, was already in the volume at the page containing the tetanus article.

'Somebody's been looking it up already,' he observed, flattening out the book.

'Nothing in that,' said Ann. 'Maybe someone wanted to know — how bad it was. It's convulsions, isn't it?'

'In the final stages, yes. Excuse me.' 'And you did it,' said Ann.

'Young woman,' said Rich, raising a quietly haggard face as his finger followed the words of the text, 'I have had much trouble in my life. I don't deserve this.'

The door opened, and Sir Henry Merrivale lumbered in.

H.M., still wearing his white flannels and shirt, had his big fists on his hips. His manner had grown even more uneasy. Ann and Courtney regarded him questioningly.

'No better,' he growled. 'If anything, a little worse. And goin' on,' His scowl deepened. 'Y'know,' he seemed to be speaking to himself rather than to the others, 'I'm glad I didn't have the responsibility for diagnosin'. Every symptom exact; rusty pin on dressing table… Oh, Lord love a duck, what's wrong?'

'Sir Henry!' said Rich sharply.

H.M. woke up.

'Hullo. You here, son?'

'In time—' Rich closed up the book with a bang— 'to hear that I'm supposed to be in trouble again. But I tell you frankly, I don't propose to be — what is the word? — framed for the second time. I don't believe it! Fourteen hours! No, sixteen hours; but it's the same. Those symptoms came on too quickly.'

'I know, son,' agreed H.M., expelling his breath. 'That's what worries me too.'

Rich's eyes narrowed.

'I wasn't aware you were a medical man, sir.' 'Uh-huh. Yes. In a small way.' 'What have they done?' 'Tetanus antitoxin…' 'How much?'

'A thousand units. Injected intrathecally by lumbar puncture. Morphia for the pain. Quiet and dark. What else can they do? And yet, d'ye know—!'

H.M. wandered across the room. He lowered his big bulk of fifteen stone into a carved chair, where he sat glowering.

'When you get to thinkin' about it,' he went on, 'you can see the symptoms, the real bad symptoms, came on too quick. Unless, of course—' he spoke slowly—'that pin had been dipped into tetanus bacilli to begin with.'

The library was so quiet that they could all hear the creaking footsteps which tiptoed in Vicky Fane's bedroom just overhead. It was a physical quality of stillness; it took listeners by the throat. Rich took a step away from the desk. Rich struck his right hand on the globe-map, setting the globe spinning like their wits.

'Are you suggesting,' he said, 'deliberate murder?'

'I dunno, son. Hardly seems probable, does it? But that'd seem the only explanation. Unless—'

H.M. stopped abruptly. His expression grew fixed and far away, his hand poised in die air. An incredulous look began to dawn behind the big spectacles. He snapped his fingers.

'Excuse me,' he muttered hastily, and hauled himself up from the chair. 'I got to go.'

He was out of the room, and the door had closed behind him, before anyone could speak. They heard his footsteps in the hall.

'Tetanus baccilli,' murmured Ann. Her own look was startled, incredulous, and frightened. 'But that couldn't be!' She appealed to Rich. 'Could it?'

'Don't ask me. I refrain, Miss Browning, from pointing out—' About to say something eke, Rich paused. 'There's a trap here,' he added.

'Doctor?'

'Yes?'

'If Vicky's going to die, when will she die?'

'How can I tell? Death from tetanus rarely takes place within twenty-hours after the onset.

Ann looked at the closed door.

'Twenty-four hours,' she repeated. 'Five o'clock in the morning. Dawn. Breakfast-time, maybe. Oh, it's horrible!'

Rich said nothing more. Without a glance at them he quietly left the library.

The minutes dragged on. With an instinct of neatness, Ann replaced the volume of the encyclopedia on its shelf.

'I think I'll go home,' she decided in a colorless voice. 'There's nothing I can do here, and I've got to be up early tomorrow morning. Will you — will you walk part of the way with me?'

'I'll walk all the way with you.'

'I go out the back. It's only in Drayton Road, near here.-You go up Elm Lane, behind the house, and turn into Old Bath Road.'