He Who Whispers dgf-16

by John Dickson Carr

  The thought of Fay, completely innocent, sick with bewilderment and fright, was one that neither the heart nor the imagination could resist. He cursed himself for ever having doubts of any kind about her. He had been seeing everything through distorted spectacles; he had been wondering, almost with a sense of repulsion mixed with the attraction he felt for her, what power of evil might lie behind the blue eyes. And yet all the time . . .

  “She isn't guilty,” Miles said. “She isn't guilty of anything.”

  “That's right.”

  “I'll tell you what Fay feels about herself. And don't think I'm making exaggerated or melodramatic statements when I say so. She feels that she's damned.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I don't think it. Know it.” Intense conviction seized him. “That's what was in her whole behaviour last night. Rightly or wrongly, she feels that she can't get away from something, and that she's damned. I don't pretend to explain what's been going on, but I know that much.

  “What's more, she's in danger. Something would happen, Dr. Fell said, if she tried to carry out her plans. That's why he said I must catch her at any cost and not lose touch with her for a moment. He said it was a matter of life and death. And, so help me, that's what I'm going to do! We owe her that much, after all she's been through. The very split-second we get out of this train . . .”

  Miles stopped.

  Some inner ear, some faint consciousness still alert, had just rung a warning. It warned him that, for the first time since he entered this Underground train, the train had come to a stop before he remembered hearing it stop.

  Then, with the bright image of the car leaping out at him, he heard a sound which galvanized him. It was the soft, rolling rumble of the doors as they started to close.

  “Miles!” cried Barbara—and woke up at exactly the same moment.

  The doors closed with a soft bump. The guard's bell-push tinkled. Miles, springing up to stare out of the window as the train glided on again, saw the words of the station-sign glaring out at him with white letters on a blue ground, and the words were “Camden Town.”

  He was afterwards told that he shouted something to the guard, but he did not realize this at the time. He only remembered plunging frantically at the doors, wrenching to get his fingers into the joining and tear them open. Someone said, “Take it easy, mate!” The Australian soldier woke up. The policeman, interested, go to his feet.

  It was no good.

  As the train whipped past the platform, gathering speed, Miles stood with his face against the glass of the doors.

  Half a dozen persons straggle towards the way-out. Dingy overhead lights swung with the wind which billowed through this stale-smelling cavern. He clearly saw Fay—in an open tweed coat and black beret, with the same blank, miserable, tortured look on her face—walking towards the way-out as the train bore him past into the tunnel.

  Chapter XVI

  Under a very dark sky, drizzling, the rain splashed into Bolsover place, Camden Town.

  Of the broad stretch of Camden High Street at no great distance from the Underground station, even off the narrow dinginess of Bolsover Street, this was a dul-de-sac seen under a brick arch.

  Its surface was of uneven paving-stones now black with rain. Straight ahead ere two blitzed houses, looking like ordinary houses until you noticed the state of the windows. On the right was a smallish factory or warehouse bearing the legend, “J. Mings & Co., Ltd., Artificial Dentures.” On the left lay first a small one-story front, boarded up, whose sign said that it had once served suppers. Next to this were two houses, brick-built of that indeterminate colour between grey and brown, with some glass in their windows and an air not entirely of decay.

  Nothing stirred there, not even a stray cat. Miles, heedless of the fact that the rain was soaking him through, gripped Barbara's arm.

  “It's all right,” Barbara muttered, moving her shoulders under the mackintosh, and holding her umbrella crookedly. “We haven't lost ten minutes.”

  “No. But we have lost that time.”

  Miles knew that she was frightened now. On the way back, where at least they had been able to step instantly into a train going in the other direction at Chalk Farm, he had been pouring out the story of last night's events. It was plain that Barbara no more knew what to make of it than he did; but she was afraid.

  “Number Five,” said Miles. “Number Five.”

  It was the last house down on the left, at right angles with the two blitzed houses. Miles noticed something else as he led Barbara over the uneven paving-stone. In a large grimy display-window on the premises of J. Mings & Co. Ltd., was a very large set of artificial teeth.

  As an advertising display they might have been considered gruesome or comic, but had they been in a better state of repair they could not have failed to attract attention. Made of metal painted in naturalistic colours as to teeth and gums, they loomed there close-shut and disembodied, a giant's teeth in the faint grey light. Miles didn't like them. He felt their presence behind him as he went to the blistered door of Number Five, on which there was a knocker.

  But his hand never reached the knocker.

  Instantly a woman's head appeared at the open ground-floor window of the house next door, moving aside what once might have been a lace curtain. She was a middle-aged woman who looked at the newcomers avidly; not at all in suspicion, but with pervading curiosity.

  “Miss Fay Seton?” said Miles

  The woman turned around towards he room behind her, evidently to kick at something, before she replied. Then she nodded towards Number Five.

  “First floor-up-left-front.”

  “I—er--just walk in?”

  “'Ow else?”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  The woman gravely inclined her head in acknowledgment of this, and just as gravely withdrew. Miles turned the knob of the door and opened it. He motioned Barbara ahead of him into a passage with a staircase. The stale mildewy air of the passage went over them in a wave. When Miles closed the door it was so dark that they could barely make out the outline of the stairs. Distantly he could hear rain pattering on a skylight.

  “I don't like it.” Barbara spoke under her breath. “Why ever does she want to live in a place like this?”

  “You know what it is in London nowadays. You can't get anything anywhere for love or money.”

  “But why did she keep the room after she'd gone to Greywood?”

  Miles wondered that himself. He didn't like the place either. He wanted to shout Fay's name, to be assured sh was here after all.

  “First-floor-up-left-front,” said Miles. “Mind the stairs.”

  It was a steep staircase, which turned round a steep bend into a narrow passage leading towards the front of the house. At the end of this passage was a window, one of its panes mended with cardboard, which looked down into Bolsover Place. It admitted enough light to show them a closed door on each side of the passage. A few seconds later, when Miles had started for the left-hand door, it admitted still more light as well.

  A fairly bright glow sprang up outside that front window, half kindling the little passage with its black linoleum. Miles, his heart in his mouth, had just raised a hand to knock at the left-hand door when the light startled him like an interruption. It startled Barbara too; he heard her heel scrape on the linoleum. Both of them glanced out of the window.

  The teeth were moving.

  Across the way, in the premises of Messrs. J. Mings & Co., a bored caretaker was amusing a Sunday afternoon by switching on a light in the grimy window and setting in motion the electric mechanism which controlled the set of teeth.

  Very slowly they opened, very slowly they closed: endlessly opening and closing o catch you eye. Grimy and evil-looking in disuse, sometimes sticking a little, the pink gums and partly darkened teeth gaped wide and shut again. They had an effect at once theatrical and horribly real. They were soundless and inhuman. Through the window, blurred with rain, they reare
d a shadow of themselves—slowly, very slowly opening and closing—on the wall of the passage.

  Barbara said softly:

  “Of all the . . .!”

  “Sh-h!”

  Miles could not have said why he called for silence; to himself he seemed occupied with the reflection that the display opposite was damned poor advertising and not very funny. He lifted his hand again, and knocked at the door.

  “Yes?” called a calm voice, after a very slight pause.

  It was Fay's voice. She was all right.

  Miles stood motionless for a second or two, watching out of the corner of his eye that blurred shadow moving on the wall, before he turned the knob. The door was not locked. He opened t.

  Fay Seton, still in the tweed coat over her dove-grey dress, stood in front of a chest-of-drawers looking round inquiringly. Her expression was placid, not even very interested, until she saw who the newcomer was. Then she gave a smothered cry.

  He could see every detail of the room clearly, since the curtains were drawn and the light was burning. A dim bulb hanging over the chest-of-drawers showed him the rather broken-down bedroom furniture, the discoloured wall-paper, the frayed carpet. A heavy tin box, painted black and half as big as a trunk, had been hastily drawn out from under the bed; its lid was not quite shut, and a small padlock hung open from the hasp.

  Fay's voice went shrilling up.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I followed you! I was told to follow you! You're in danger! There's--”

  Miles took two steps into the room.

  “I'm afraid you startled me,” said Fay, controlling herself. One hand went under her heart, a gesture he had seen her make before. She gave a little laugh. “ didn't expect--! After all--!” Then, quickly: “Who's that with you?”

  “This is Miss Morell. The sister of—well, of Jim Morell. She wants very much to meet you. She . . .”

  Then Miles saw what was on top of the chest-of-drawers, and everything in existence seemed to stop.

  First he saw an old brief-case of black leather, dried and dusty and cracked, bulging from something inside it; its straps were loosened, and the flap was partly opened. But an old brief-case may belong to anyone. Beside it lay a large, flat packet of banknotes, the topmost one showing the denomination of twenty pounds. The colour of the banknotes might once have been white; they had now a dry, blurred, smeary appearance, and were stained in dry patches of rust-brown.

  Fay's pale face was paler yet as she saw the direction of his glance. It seemed very difficult for her to draw breath.

  “Yes,” she told him. “Those are bloodstains. Mr. Brooke's blood, you see, got on them when they . . .”

  “For the love o God, Fay!”

  “I'm not needed here,” Barbara's voice spoke frantically, but not loudly. “I didn't really want to come. But Miles . . .”

  “Please do come in,” Fay said in her gentle voice, while the blue eyes kept roving and roving as though she scarcely saw him. “And close the door.”

  Yet she was not calm. This apparent case was the effect of sheer despair, or of some emotion akin to it. Miles' head was spinning. He carefully closed the door, to get even a few seconds in which to think. Gently he put his hand on Barbara's shoulder, for Barbara was on the point of running out of the room. He looked round the bedroom, feeling its close air stifle him.

  Then he found his voice.

  “But you can't be guilty after all!” he said with desperate reasonableness. It seemed vitally important to convince Fay, logically, that she couldn't be guilty. “I tell you, it's impossible! It's . . .Listen!”

  “Yes?” said Fay.

  Beside the chest-of-drawers there was an old armchair with patches of its back and arms frayed to threads. Fay sank down into it, her shoulders drooping. Though her expression hardly changed, the tears welled out of her eyes and ran unheeded down her cheeks. He had never sen her cry before, and this was worse than anything else.

  “We know now,” said Miles, feeling numb, “that you weren't guilty of anything at all. I've heard . . . I've just heard, I tell you! . . . that all those accusations against you were a fake deliberately trumped up by Harry Brooke--”

  Fay raised her head quickly.

  “So you know that,” she said.

  “What's more”--he suddenly realized something else, and stood back and pointed his fingers at her--”you knew it too! You knew they were trumped up by Harry Brooke! You've known it all along!”

  It was more than the flash of illumination which sometimes comes from strung-up emotion: it was a fitting-together of facts.

  “That's why, last night, you started to laugh in that crazy way when I asked you whether you and Harry Brooke had got married after all. That's why you brought up the subject of anonymous letters against you, though Rigaud had never mentioned any. That's why you talked about Jim Morell, the great friend Harry wrote to every week; though Rigaud never heard of him either.—You've known all along! Haven't you?”

  “Yes. I've known all along.”

  It was little more than a whisper. The tears still welled out of her eyes, and her lips had begun to shake as well.

  “Are you insane, Fay? Have you gone completely off your head? Why didn't you ever speak out and say so?”

  “Because . . . oh, God, what difference does it make now?”

  “What difference does it make?” Miles swallowed hard, “With this damned thing--!” He strode over to the chest-of-drawers and picked up the packet of bank-notes, feeling repulsion in the touch of them. “There are three more packets in the brief-case, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” said Fay. “Three more. I only stole them. I didn't spend them.”

  “Come to think of it, what else is in that brief-case? What makes it bulge like that?”

  “Don't touch that brief-case! Please!”

  “All right. I've got no right to badger you like this. I know that. I'm only doing it because—because it's necessary. But you ask what difference it makes? When for nearly six years the police have been trying to find out what happened to this case and the money inside it?”

  The footsteps outside in the passage, which they had been too preoccupied to hear until now, approached the door with a casual air. But the tap on the door, though not loud, had a peremptory sound which could not be disregarded.

  It was Miles who spoke; neither of the two women were capable of it.

  “Who's there?”

  “I'm a police officer,” said the voice outside, with that same combination of the casual and the peremptory. “Mind if I come in?”

  Miles' hand, still holding the banknotes, moved as fast as a striking snake when he thrust those notes into his pocket. It was, he thought to himself, just as well. For the person outside did not wait for an invitation.

  Framed in the doorway, as he swung the door wide open, stood a tall square-shouldered man in a raincoat and a bowler hat. All of them, perhaps, had been expecting a uniform to Miles at least this was rather more ominous. There was something vaguely familiar about the new-comer's face: the close-cropped moustache turning grey, the square jaw with muscles conspicuous at the corners, the suggestion of the military.

  He stood looking from one to the other of the persons in front of him, his hand on the knob; and, in the passage behind him, the light reared and lowered a shadow of he opening and closing of teeth.

  Twice those teeth opened and closed before the newcomer cleared his throat.

  “Miss Fay Seton?”

  Fay rose to her feet, turning out her wrist by way of reply. Superbly graceful, unconscious of the tear-stains on her face; drained of violence, past caring.

  “My name is Hadley,” the stranger announced. “Superintendent Hadley. Metropolitan C.I.D.”

  And now Miles realized why this face was vaguely familiar. Miles had moved over to the side of Barbara Morell. It was Barbara who spoke.

  “I interviewed you once,” said Barbara shakily, “for the Morning Record. You talked a g
ood deal, but you wouldn't give m permission to print much of it.”

  “Right,” agreed Hadley, and looked at her. “You're Miss Morell, of course.” He looked thoughtfully at Miles. “And you must be Mr. Hammond. You seem to have got yourself pretty thoroughly soaking wet.”

  “It wasn't raining when I left home.”

  “Always wise,” said Hadley, shaking his head, “to take a raincoat when you go out in these days. I could lend you mine, only I'm afraid I'm going to need it myself.”

  The studiedly social air of all this, with its element of deadly danger and tension underneath, couldn't go on for long. Miles broke it.

  “Look here, Superintendent!” He burst out. “You didn't come here to talk about the weather. The main thing is—you're a friend of Dr. Fell.”

  “That's right,” agreed Hadley. He came in, removed his hat, and closed the door.

  “But Dr. Fell said the police weren't going to be brought into this!”

  “Into what?” Hadley asked politely, with a slight smile.

  “Into anything!”

  “Well, that depends on what you mean,” said Hadley.

  His eyes wandered round the room: at Fay's handbag and black beret on the bed, at the big dusty tin box drawn out from under the bed, at the drawn curtains on the two little windows. His gaze rested, without apparent curiosity, on the brief-case lying there conspicuously under the light over the chest-of-drawers.

  Miles, his right hand tightly clutching the sheaf of banknotes in his pocket, watched him as you might watch a tame tiger.

  “The fact is,” Hadley pursued easily, “I've had a very long 'phone conversation with the maestro . . .”

  “With Dr. Fell?

  “Yes. And a good deal of it wasn't quite clear. But it seems, Mr. Hammond, your sister had a very bad and dangerous scare last night.”

  Fay Seton moved round the big tin box and picked up her handbag from the bed. She went to the chest-of-drawers, tilted the mirror above it so as better to catch the light, and set about with handkerchief and powder to remove the traces of tears. Her eyes in the mirror were blank, like blue marbles; but her elbow quivered frantically.

  Miles clutched the banknotes.