dear fellow! Let me show you the condemned cell and the execution shed.'
Martin braced himself. 'Mr. Stannard, I can't go with you.'
'Can't go with me!”
'No.'
For some seconds Stannard did not reply. Lowering his dark head, he put the pencil with great care in the middle of the plan. Martin sensed the hidden quirk at the corner of his mouth. Vividly he remembered Stannard at Ruth's flat on Thursday night: the chuckle, the too-fixed smile, the glitter of the black eyes, Stannard's too frequent glances at Ruth. Will you forgive me, Mr. Stannard, for saying that you are a little pompous?’ Martin remembered that too.
Then Stannard straightened up. 'To tell you the truth, young man, I am not altogether surprised.'
'Look here! Will you just let me explain?'
'Of course.' Stannard inclined his head courteously.
'On Thursday night I didn't know something I know now. There was a certain girl—' here he saw Stannard's eyes narrow—'I'd lost for three years. On Friday I found her. There's what you might call family opposition, and everything is upset. I promised to take her driving tonight'
And now Martin recognized the other's posture. In imagination he saw Stannard, in wig and gown, standing behind a desk on counsel's bench: his head a little inclined to one side, listening in cross-examination with that air of polite incredulity and amusement which is all the more effective because it keeps a perfectly straight face.
'Indeed,' Stannard observed. 'You promised to take her driving.' The inflection he put into the words was masterly.
'Yes!'
'When was this appointment made?' 'This afternoon.'
'I see. You consider it sufficient excuse for breaking a previous engagement which has entailed some time and trouble, and which you suggested yourself?'
Fleet House, the chilly and wicked Grecian house which to Martin was beginning to seem like a prison, might have laughed.
'The circumstances are unusual,' retorted Martin. He was conscious, under the black glitter of the eyes, how flat these words would have sounded in court. I hoped you would release me.'
Stannard slowly shook his head. He sent a surreptitious glance towards — Ruth, who was sitting on a sofa turning over the pages of an illustrated paper as if she had heard nothing.
'I can't force you,' smiled Stannard, 'But 'release' you: no, I will not The fact is, young man, you've lost your nerve.'
'That doesn't happen to be true.'
Truth has many guises,' said Stannard, dryly scoring a point while appearing to concede one. 'It's unfortunate, too. I had devised a special test for your nerve.'
'Nerve?'
'And for mine too, of course. Now it will apply only to me. Still,' he chuckled, 'I hope to survive.' 'What’s the test?'
'Does it matter? Since you are not interested..
Martin took a step forward.
Stannard's movements were deliberate. From a tapestry wing-chair beside the mantlepiece he took up a thick blue-bound book with faded gilt lettering on the back.
'I have been looking through Atcheson's
'About ghosts,' Stannard went on, 'let me repeat my dictum. I don't say yes; I don't say no. What I can credit are the influences, released emotions. Haven't we all had the same experience, in a small way? We go into a house, usually an empty house. And for no reason at all someone says, I can't stand this place; let's get out''
Martin was about to say, 'Like this.' He also noticed Ruth looking furtively around, and wondered if it touched her too. Yet the library was a web-lighted room, two windows east and
two south, though green-shaded by the trees.
The vibrations in that death-house,' added Stannard, 'must be like lying under a tolling bell.'
'Never mind the vibrations. What's this test?'
'Ah!' murmured Stannard. He threw the book back into the chair and took up the pencil. 'Observe this architect's plan of the prison!'
'Well? What about it?'
'You notice that the wings are like spokes in a wheel, with the outer wall as its rim. These shaded spaces between the spokes—' the yellow pencil moved briefly—'are exercise grounds, gardens, and so on: open to the sky. Our concern is Wing B—' again the pencil moved'—'which is here. Wing B, on the ground floor, contained mainly offices for clerical work. But at the far end of it,
Ruth Callice had abandoned the paper and joined them by the table, where Stannard leaned on the crackling plan.
Ruth, Martin was thinking, couldn't have been brushed by any emanation from Fleet House. She had been here too many times before; she was a friend of Aunt Cicely; she would have remarked on it. Yes; but had Ruth ever said anything at all about Fleet House?
Stannard's yellow pencil was moving again.
'Pentecost, please remember, was not abandoned until 1938. It had the most up-to-date of neck-cracking methods.'
'Stan,' Ruth began in an uncertain voice, 'do you think it's necessary to dwell so..'
But Stannard was looking at Martin.
'There was none of that hideous walk across a yard, into a shed, and up thirteen steps. The condemned cell at Pentecost is
Here Stannard made a chopping motion with his hand.
'— and plunge on a rope into a brick-lined pit. All in a merciful matter of seconds.
'My point,' he added, after a slight pause, 'is that these two rooms and the passage form a separate unit a kind of self-contained flat, shut off by the iron door of the passage. Here is the key to that passage.'
And he held it up. It was a large key, though it fitted easily into the pocket of his brown tweed plus-four suit
'All the inside doors of the prison, of course, were unlockedat the time the government took it over for the infernal storage purposes.'' Stannard's face mocked diem behind the big key. 'However, I got this one. Shall I tell you how my test
Martin, himself white as a ghost with wrath, merely nodded. 'The vigil,' mused Stannard,
'You and I,' pursued Stannard, 'would then have drawn lots. Whoever lost would have gone to the execution shed and closed the door behind him. The other would have locked the iron door, so that the loser would be shut into the flat.
'The winner,' Stannard's mouth quirked, 'would sit down outside the iron door, and wait The locked-up man, of course, could move from the execution shed across to the condemned cell But I cannot think that any swirling and pressing influences would hammer his brain less hard in the condemned cell than in the execution shed. He would be a rat in a spiritual trap. If be cried out for help, the man outside must unlock the iron door and let him out
'The man outside, it is true, even the so-called winner, would have no easy time. If any spiritual evil raged there, he would be very close to it. You and I — one inside, one out— would remain there alone from twelve o'clock