The Reader Is Warned - John Carr

'That's all right. Looky here. I'm trying to extract from you your meed of information. The last time I saw you, you had only one object. The last time I saw you, you were goin' bald-headed to find something out about Pennik. Have you found out anything about him?' Masters was himself again.

'Ah! I have, just a bit. Not much, but I'm grateful for anything.' 'Well?'

'Part of it I got from Mr Chase, and part of it by a piece of luck from the proprietor of the Black Swan Hotel.' Masters frowned. 'As you say, the trouble so far has been to find out something about Mr Ruddy Pennik, who he is or what he does or where he comes from. I saw Mr Chase yesterday. He seems to be the only person now remaining alive who knows anything at all about Pennik.'

H. M. opened his eyes.

'Very cheerin' thought, that is. I hope it comforts him.'

'As a matter of fact, sir, I - hurrum! - I asked Mr Chase "whether he could manage to drop in here and see us to-day. I thought you might like to talk to him. But that's by the way. I thought of getting a line on Pennik through his universities. Which were Oxford and Heidelberg, according to Mr Chase. But Oxford doesn't know anything about him. And neither does Heidelberg, except that he took a degree there about fifteen years ago, with all kinds of honours for (stop a bit) metaphysics. He spelled his first name with two "n's" then.'

'Did he, now?'

"The only other bit comes from the Black Swan. Now everybody, when they first meet Pennik, gets an idea that he's some sort of foreigner;, but they can't think why. I did myself, and hanged if I know why. The proprietor of the Black Swan thought so, too. He wanted Pennik to sign the foreign-visitors register. Pennik got annoyed, and said no, and pulled out a passport on the Union of South Africa. The proprietor was convinced, but he wasn't certain, so he jotted down the number of the passport on the q.t. Still, I thought it was worth while cabling to get a report, if possible, on the holder of that passport. Eh.'

H. M. grunted: 'Any reply?'

"No, I'm sorry to say.'

'And he scrapes through there too,' growled H.M. ‘Burn me, they won't leave any indications or hen-tracks, will they? Or - will they? Take Mrs Constable's murder, for instance. Even you will admit it was a murder now. We've just heard the story of the funny business from Sanders. I take it you've been all over the ground? Looked for the finger-prints and the stray cuff-links and what not?' 'Lord knows I have!'

'Yes. Find anything?'

‘No, sir, we did not find anything. We combed every inch of the room where that lady died, and every other inch of the place as well, and we got absolutely nothing. Fingerprints? Oh, ah! A whole crop of 'em. But then everybody had been through that place at one time or another.'

He bent forward earnestly, tapping the table with a knife.

'There was the poor lady lying in bed, in a nightgown and that pink dressing-gown, and the bedclothes kicked back. She'd undoubtedly put up a struggle, a real struggle, as the doctor will tell you ...'

H. M. looked up.

'Hold on! A physical struggle?'

The chief inspector hesitated, and looked at Sanders.

'I shouldn't have said so,' the latter replied, with a vivid vision of the bed and its occupant. 'There were no marks or bruises on her, in any case. I should have said a struggle in the sense of a hard seizure like the one she described her husband having had out in the hall before he died.'

There was a slight shiver in the overheated room.

'Yes; but,' argued H. M., 'keeping this to the physical plane, could anybody have got at her for a physical struggle?'

Sanders considered.

'The chief inspector and I have been arguing that It's remotely possible; but I doubt it. I last saw her alive at half-past eleven. I then locked up the room, locking the door to the bathroom and the door to the hall as I went out. After that I sat on the stairs for fifteen minutes. At a quarter to twelve I went downstairs - just as the telephone rang. I "spoke to the newspapers and hurried back upstairs again within (I am sure) two or three minutes at the most.

'Now, this isn't a "hermetically sealed room. The locks on those doors are very old-fashioned and could have been hocussed in half a dozen ways. For instance, somebody could have gone in through the bathroom door while I was sitting on the stairs outside the other door. Afterwards there are several ways by which the murderer could have gone out again by the bathroom door and turned the key from outside, leaving it locked again. Granted. But if she had been murdered by a physical attack at any time while I was sitting at the top of the stairs just outside the hall door, I'm damned certain I should have heard it.'

'H'mf! I You weren't very far away from the door, son ?'

'No. Only about eight feet. And, as Masters says, she struggled violently before she died on that bed. I'm certain I couldn't have helped hearing it.'

'Fair enough. Shut up, Masters 1 And there wasn't a sound?'

'No. Nothing at all. Which means that the attack must have taken place during the two or three minutes while I was downstairs at the telephone. All right; I admit it did. In that case the murderer would have had to get through a locked door, kill Mrs Constable after a struggle by a means that left no trace, and get out again. The murderer could have done that, yes. He could have left the doors locked behind him, as I said a minute ago. But it seems a remarkably short space of time for it to happen in, that's all.'

H. M. spoke slowly.

'So she died alone,' he said. 'Like her husband in the hall.' .

Into Masters's face had come a quiet affability, such a blandness that H. M. regarded him with suspicion.

'Just a moment, sir,' he interposed. 'Just a moment, if you please. Now, you say that there was nobody in that house on Sunday night except Dr Sanders and Mrs Constable. You say there was no third person?'

'I dunno. We're still debatin' whether Pennik's astral projection was there.'

Masters's epithet turned Pennik's astral projection into something much shorter and less dignified.

' - because, sir, I'm in a position to prove - to prove -that there was a third person there.'

'Well?'

'You remember those two green candles on the chest-of-drawers in Mr Constable's room?'

'I do,' said H. M.; and his eyes narrowed.

'Just before you and I left Fourways on Sunday night we had a look into Pennik's room and found him gone. Just so! We also had a look into Mr Constable's room. Just so! You pointed out those two green candles to me, and showed how both of 'em were burned down about half an inch.'

·Get on with it, son! Well?'

Masters sat back.

'After Mrs Constable's death,' he said, 'the same two candles were both burned down another half-inch.'

CHAPTER XIV

'I don't see what it's got to do with us,' pursued Masters. 'Or with the death of either Mr or Mrs Constable. It's not what you'd call a clue.' He chuckled a little. 'Oh, I've had my ideas, I'm bound to admit. What I thought of first off was a poisoned candle. I've read a story (in fact, I've read two stories) in which a bloke was polished off with a poisoned candle. But the doctor here swears blue that neither of the victims died from poison, solid, liquid; or gaseous. And that's good enough for me.'

He raised one finger impressively.

'It proves very little about the murders. But it does more or less prove there was a third person at Fourways on Sunday night. You and I, Sir Henry, were the last to leave; and the candles hadn't been burned their extra half-inch then... I daresay, Doctor, you didn't burn 'em?'

'No. I certainly didn't.'

'Just so.' Here the chief inspector hesitated. 'And no reason, is there, why the dead lady should have burned 'em herself? Stop: I know what you'll say. She might have. Admitted. But why should she? Does it seem likely? No. Unless it was suicide. But then the candles weren't poisoned, so they couldn't have killed anybody. Oh, lummy, lead me to a lunatic asylum.'

At last H. M. spoke.

"That tears it,' he said.

'What tears it?'

'The candles. I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track now. -I say, Masters. Any finger-prints on 'em?' 'No.'

'Any more spots of candle-grease? You know, like the spots on the carpet in Constable's room, whose position I kept pointin' out to you?'

'Nary a spot.'

I-LM. grunted. 'No. I didn't think there would be. This time the murderer was more careful.'

'Was he, now?' muttered the chief inspector, eyeing H. M. with a strained and corked expression. 'So the murderer was in the house on Sunday night, eh? I'm going to talk to you straight, Sir Henry. If you've got any notion how this was done, or how Mr Ruddy Pennik managed to be in two places at once, or what those even ruddier candles mean, tell me flat out and don't talk flummery. I'm not in the mood for it.'

- H. M. grunted again. 'I'm not either, if it comes to that. Burn me, Masters, didn't you ever feel you were just on the edge of something, hot quite seein' it, not quite, but almost getting the -' He slid his fists along the table-cloth. 'Almost! That's all. It's like trackin' back something you've just dreamed. It's a spiritual experience you'd best avoid. Tell me one more thing, and I'll exchange information for information. That big press-cutting scrap-book of Mrs Constable's: have you found it yet?' 'No.'

'Did you look for it ?'

'Ho! Did we look for it?' said Masters, with a certain sarcasm. 'Between me and the superintendent and his men we've been over every inch of that house. And I mean every inch. It's not in the house. But does that surprise me? Not so's you'd notice it. At the end of the week-end, all .the guests walked away from that house carrying bags. It went away in one of those bags, that's all; somebody pinched it.'

'It's a possibility. Sure. The only objection to it from my point of view is that I don't believe it. I said this before, and in spite of all the burstin' dams I'll say it again. Mina Constable hid that book before she was murdered. If I ever saw a thing in a human face, I saw that in hers; and I'll bet you my hat to a tanner it's still in the house.'

The chief inspector mustered all his force of reasonableness; you could see him doing it.

'Dr Sanders!' he said. 'You're the only one who's seen this scrap-book. About how big was it?'

Sanders considered.

'About eighteen inches high, an inch or so thick, and ten or twelve inches broad, I should say.'

'Eighteen inches high,' continued Masters, holding his hand at that height from the floor, 'and ten or twelve inches broad. What you'd call a stunner of a big book. Outstanding. And bound in heavy stiff imitation leather. She couldn't have burnt it, as you said yourself; she couldn't have destroyed it. She didn't leave the house at any time. Would you like to tell me where in the house she could have hidden a big book like that so that we didn't find it?'

'I dunno, son. I'm bein' stubborn.'

'You are. You mean you think it contains the secret of how all this hocus-pocus was worked?'

'Somethin' like that. Maybe.'

'If it does,' said Masters with restraint, 'by George! It ought to be bought for the nation and put in the British Museum. In the first place if s invisible. In the second place it contains the secret of why two green candles are burned every time a person dies. In the third place it shows how Pennik can be in the bar-parlour of a country hotel and at the same time in the conservatory of a house four miles away -'

'Uh-huh. I admit that. Pennik's the problem; and yet, d'ye know, it may not be so difficult after all. From what I've seen of Pennik-'

Masters stopped him. Masters said:

'From what you've seen of Pennik? But you haven't seen him yet! He wouldn't meet us at the Black Swan on Sunday night. You haven't seen him at all.'

'Oh yes, I have,' said H. M, He removed his glasses, which gave his eyes a different, rather caved-in expression of bleariness; it suddenly turned him into a stranger. After looking at the glasses through the light, he replaced them. But for a moment he had really looked like the old man.

'Oh yes, I have,' he repeated. 'Like young Chase on a certain interestin' occasion, I didn't meet him and I didn't talk to him; but I saw him.'

‘When? Where?'

‘Last night, in the Gold Grill Room of the Corinthian Hotel. I'm well treated, I am. I've got two daughters whose greatest pleasure in life is to make me lose sleep. For every extra hour of sleep they can make me lose, it's one up to them. So I got dragged off for an after-theatre supper. And there was Pennik in the Gold Grill Room of the Corinthian, blossomin' out in all his grandeur. Havin' supper with him was Hilary Keen.'

The chief inspector whisded.

Sanders, on the other hand, wondered whether he could ever leave off doubting anything or anyone in this world. He could not decipher the expression on H. M.'s face.

'Well, what of it?' Sanders demanded; and yet jealousy struck as sharp and quick as a dart in a board. 'Why shouldn't she? Though I'm having dinner with her to-night myself, and I hadn't heard anything about it. But I can't afford places like the Corinthian.'

'If I thought,' muttered the chief inspector, 'that that young lady was in cahoots with Pennik -'

H. M.'s weary gesture cut short his excitement.

'Oh, Masters, my son. Nol Pennik's not in cahoots with anybody; Pennik's the lone wolf. But don't you see the real point I'm drivin' at? There she was, all coloured up and half-way out of a gown like my two gals. And yet she was scared, Masters, blind scared and watchin' Pennik out of the corner of her eye even when he only lifted his hand to call a waiter.' He paused.

'As for Pennik, Pennik wasn't too happy about one thing. That grill room's got lots of glare and glitter and red plush, but it's a tiny little place. When it's overcrowded, the effect on the nerves of anybody who can't stand being shut in - like Pennik - must be pretty raw. All that kept him going was to look at her. Y'see, he's fallen for her in a way I don't like one little bit. And that brings us to the point.'

He peered round at Sanders.

'I haven't said much about your affairs, son. What you're beginning to feel for Joe Keen's daughter may be only action-on-the-rebound or it may be the real thing. That's not important at the moment. What's important is this: at the rate things are goin' now, as sure as God made little apples you and Pennik are due to collide with a smash. Had you thought about that?' ‘No.'

'Then think about it, son,' said H. M. sombrely. 'Because once before, Masters tells me - hullo!'

He broke off, drawing his eyebrows together. Hilary Keen in the flesh, followed by Lawrence Chase, had just come through the revolving door of the restaurant, stamping and shaking rain from their waterproofs. Lowering her umbrella, Hilary glanced out rather apprehensively at the street. The storm, which seemed to have been dying down, had swung back again. A glint of lightning looked pale over the solidness of Whitehall; and, with a shake in that curtain, a faint crackle of thunder exploded along the sky and joined the rain.