He Who Whispers dgf-16

by John Dickson Carr

  Dr. Fell put up a hand to his eyeglasses.

  “Oh, ah? The same little red-and-gold bottle that's on the bedside table now?”

  I—I suppose so.” There was that infernal smile again, curling. “Anyway, she put it on the bedside table by the lamp. She was sitting in a chair there.”

  “And them?”

  “It wasn't much, but she seemed awfully pleased. She gave me nearly a quarter of a pound of chocolates loose in a box. I have them downstairs in my room now.”

  “And then?”

  “I—I don't know what you want me to say, really. We talked. I was restless. I walked up and down . . .”

  (Images crowded back into Miles Hammond's mind. As he himself had left the library, hours ago, he remembered glancing up and seeing a woman's shadow pass across the light, lonely against the screen of the New Forest.)

  “Marion asked me why I was restless, and I said I didn't know. Mostly she did the talking, about her fiance and her brother and her plans for the future. The lamp was on the bedside table; did I tell you? And the bottle of perfume. All of a sudden, about midnight it was, she broke off and said there!--it was time we were both turning in and getting some sleep, so I wen downstairs to bed. I'm afraid that's all I can tell you.”

  “Miss Hammond didn't seem nervous or alarmed about anything?”

  “Oh, no!”

  Dr. Fell grunted. Dropping the dead pipe into his pocket, he deliberately removed his eyeglasses and held them a few feet away from his eyes, studying them with screwed-up face like a painter, though in that light he could scarcely have seen them at all. His wheezings and snortings, a sign of deep meditation, grew even louder.

  “You know of course, that Miss Hammond was nearly frightened to death?”

  “Yes. It must have been dreadful.”

  “Have you any theory, then,” pursued Dr. Fell in exactly the same tone of voice, “to account for the equally mysterious death of Howard Brooke on Henri Quatre's tower nearly six years ago?”

  Without gibing her time for a reply, still holding up the eyeglasses and appearing to scrutinize them with intense concentration, Dr. Fell added in an offhand tone:

  “Some people, Miss Seton, are very curious correspondents. They will pour out in letters to people far away what they wouldn't dream of telling someone in the same town. You have—harrumph—perhaps noticed it?”

  To Miles Hammond it seemed that the whole atmosphere of this interview had subtly changed. For Dr. Fell spoke again.

  “Are you a good swimmer, Miss Seton?”

  Pause.

  “Fairly good. I daren't do much of it because of my heart.”

  “But I should hazard a guess, ma'am, that if necessary you do not object to swimming under water?”

  And now a wind came whispering and rustling, sinuously, through the forest; and Miles knew the atmosphere had changed. Not subtly, but on Fay Seton's part charged with emotion, perhaps deadly. It was the same silent outburst he had sensed and felt a while ago, in the kitchen, over boiling water. It engulfed the hall in an invisible tide. Fay knew. Dr. Fell knew. Fay's lips were drawn back from her teeth, and the teeth glittered.

  It was then, as Fay took a blundering step backwards to get away from Dr. Fell, that the door to Marion's bedroom opened.

  The opening of the door poured yellow light into the hall. Georges Antoine Rigaud, in his shirt-sleeves, regarded them in a state of near-raving.

  “I tell you,” he cried out, “I cannot keep this woman's heart beating much longer. Where is that doctor? Why does not that doctor arrive? What is delaying . . .”

  Professor Rigaud checked himself.

  Past his shoulder, past a wide-open door, Miles by moving a little could see into the bedroom. He could see Marion, his own sister Marion, lying on a still more tumbled bed. The .32 revolver, useless against certain intruders, had slipped off the bed onto the floor. Marion's black hair was spread out on the pillow. Her arms were thrown wide, on sleeve pushed up where a hypodermic injection had been made in the arm. She had the aspect of a sacrifice.

  In that moment, by a single gesture, terror rushed on them out of the New Forest.

  For Professor Rigaud saw Fay Seton's face. And Georges Antoine Rigaud—Master of Arts, man of the world, tolerant watcher of human foibles—instinctively flung up his hand in the sign against the evil eye.

  Chapter XII

  Miles Hammond dreamed a dream.

  Instead of being asleep at Greywood, on that Saturday night passing into Sunday morning—which was actually the ease—he dreamed that he was downstairs in the sitting-room, at night under a good lamp, seated in any easy-chair and taking notes from a large book.

  The passage:

  “In Slavonic lands popular folklore credits the vampire with existence merely as an animated corpse: that is, a being confined to its coffin by day, and emerging only after nightfall for its prey. In Western Europe, notably in France, the vampire is a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but a demon living outwardly a normal life in the community, but capable during sleep or trance of projecting its soul in the form of straw or spinning mist to take visible bodily shape.”

  Miles nodded as he underscored it.

  “'Creberrima fama est mulique se expertos uel ab eis,' to quote a possible explanation of the origin of these latter, 'qui experto exxent, de quorum fie dubitandum non esset, audisse confirmant, Sluanos et Panes, quos uulog incubos uocant, improbos saepe extitisse mulieribus et earun adpetisse ac ergisse concubitum, ut hoc negare impudentiae uideatur.'”

  “I shall have to translate this,” Miles aid to himself in his dream. “I wonder if there's a Latin dictionary in the library.”

  So he went into the library in search of a Latin dictionary. But he knew all along who would be waiting there.

  During his work at Regency history Miles had for a long time been captivated by the character of Lady Pamela Hoyt, a sprightly court beauty of a hundred and forty years gone by, no better than she should be, and perhaps a murderess. In his dream he knew that in the library he would meet Lady Pamela Hoyt.

  There was as yet no sense of fear. The library looked just as usual, with its dusty uneven piles of books round the floor. On one pile of books sat Pamela Hoyt, in a broad-brimmed straw hat and a high-waisted Regency gown of sprigged muslin. Across from her sat Fay Seton. Each one looked just as real as the other; he was conscious of nothing unusual.

  “I wonder if you could tell me,” Miles said in his dream, “whether my uncle keeps a Latin dictionary here?”

  He heard their reply soundlessly, if it can be expressed like that.

  “I really don't think he does,” replied Lady Pamela politely, and Fay Seton shook her head too. “But you could go upstairs and ask him.”

  There was a flash of lightning outside the windows. Suddenly Miles felt an intense reluctance to go upstairs and ask his uncle about a Latin dictionary. Even in the dream he knew his Uncle Charles was dead, of course; but that wasn't the reason for his reluctance. Th reluctance grew into terror, solidifying coldly through his veins. He wouldn't go! He couldn't go! Bu something impelled him to go. And all the time Pamela Hoyt an Fay Seton, with enormous eyes, sat perfectly motionless like wax dummies. There was a shaking crash of thunder . . .

  Miles, with bright sunlight in his face, was shocked awake.

  He sat up, feeling the arms of the chair on either side o him.

  He was in the sitting-room downstairs, hunched up in the tapestry char by the fireplace. In a momentary backwash of the dream, wildly, he half expected to see Fay and dead Pamela Hoyt walk out of the library door over there behind him.

  But here was the familiar room, with the Leonardo above the mantelpiece, and soft brilliant sunshine. An the telephone was ringing shrilly. The events of last night returned to Miles as he heard it ring.

  Marion was safe. Safe, and going to get well. Dr. Garvice had said she was out of danger.

  Yes! And Dr. Fell was asleep upstairs in his own room
, and Professor Rigaud in Steve Curtis's: these being the only two other inhabitable bedrooms at Greywood. That was why he had dossed down here in the chair.

  Greywood felt hushed, felt empty and new-washed, in a fresh morning stillness, though he could tell by the position of the sun that it must be past eleven o'clock. Still the telephone kept on clamouring on the wide window-sill. He stumbled over to to, stretching his muscles, and caught it up.

  “May I speak to Mr. Miles Hammond?” said a voice. “This is Barbara Morell.”

  Then Miles definitely became awake.

  “Speaking,” he answered. “Are you—I asked you this once before—by any chance a mind-reader?”

  “What's that?”

  Miles sat down on the floor with his back to the wall under the windows: not a dignified position, but it gave him a sense of siting across from the speaker for a heart-to-heart talk.

  “If you hadn't rung me,” he went on, “I was going to try to get in touch with you.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  For some reason it gave him extraordinary pleasure to hear her voice. There was no subtlety, he reflected, about Barbara Morell. Simply because she had played that trick with the Murder Club, it showed her as transparent as a child.

  “Dr. Fell is here. . . . No, no, he's not annoyed about it! He hasn't so much as mentioned the club! . . . Last night he tried to make Fay Seton admit something, and he had no success. He says now you're our last hope. He says that if you don't help us we may b dished.”

  “I don't think,” Barbara's voice said doubtfully, “you're making yourself very clear.”

  “Look here! Listen! If I came in to town this afternoon, could I possibly see you?”

  Pause.

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “This is Sunday. I think there's a train,” he searched his memory, “at half-past one. Yes, I'm sure there's a train at half-past one. It takes roughly two hours. Where could I see you?”

  Barbara seemed to be debating.

  “I could meet your train at Waterloo. Then we might have tea somewhere.”

  “Excellent idea!” All last night's bewilderment swept over him. “The only thing I can tell you now is that there was a very bad business here last night. Something happened in my sister's room that seems past human belief. If we can only find an explanation . . .”

  Miles glanced up.

  Stephen Curtis—sober-faced, conscientiously correct from his hat to his grey double-breasted suit, carrying a rolled umbrella over his arm—Stephen Curtis, coming in at a jaunty pace from the reception-hall, caught the last words and stopped short.

  Miles had dreaded telling Steve, dreaded telling the mental counterpart of Marion. It was all right now, of course. Marion wasn't going to die. At the same time, he spoke hastily to the telephone.

  “Sorry I have to ring off now, Barbara. See you later.” And he hung up.

  Stephen, his forehead growing faintly worried, contemplated his future brother-in-law sitting on the floor: unshaven, wild and tousle-headed.

  “Look here, old man . . .”

  “It's all right!” Miles assured him, springing to his feet. “Marion's had a very bad time of it, but she's going to get well. Dr. Garvice says . . .”

  “Marion?” Steve's voice went high, and all the colour drained out of his face. “What is it? What's happened?”

  “Something or someone got into her room last night, and frightened her very nearly to death. But she'll be as right as rain in two or three days, so you're not to worry.”

  For a few seconds, while Miles could not meet his eye, neither of them spoke. Stephen walked forward. Stephen, that self-controlled man, fastened sinewy fingers round the handle of his rolled umbrella; deliberately he lifted the umbrella high in the air; deliberately he brought it down with a smash on the edge of the table under the windows.

  The umbrella subsided, bent metal and broken ribs amid black cloth; a useless heap, an inanimate object that for some reason looked pitiful like the body of a shot bird.

  “It was that damned librarian, I suppose?” Stephen asked almost calmly.

  “Why should you say that?”

  “I don't know. But I knew at the station yesterday, I felt it in my bones, I tried to warn you both, that there was trouble coming. Some people cause something-or-other wherever they go.” A blue, congested vein showed at his temple. “Marion!”

  “We owe her life, Steve, to a man named Professor Rigaud. I don't think I've told you about him. Don't wake him now; he's had a long night of it; but he's asleep in your room.”

  Stephen turned away. He walked over to the line of low white-painted bookshelves along the west wall, with the big framed portraits over them. He stood there with his back to Miles, his hands spread out on the shelf-top. When he turned round a little later Miles saw, with acute embarrassment, that there were tears in his eyes.

  Both of them suddenly spoke with desperation of trivialities.

  “Did you—er--just get here?” asked Miles.

  “Yes. Caught the nine-thirty from town.”

  “Crowded?”

  “Fairly crowded. Where is she?”

  “Upstairs. She's asleep now.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “I don't know any reason why not. I tell you, she's all right! But go quietly; everybody else is in bed.”

  Everybody else, however, was not in bed. As Stephen turned towards the door to the reception hall, there appeared in the doorway the vastness of Dr. Fell, carrying a cup of tea on a tray and looking as though he did not quite know how it had got there.

  Ordinarily it would have been as startling to Stephen Curtis to find an unexplained guest in the house as to find a new member of the family at breakfast. Now, however, he hardly noticed Dr. Fell; the presence of someone else only served as a reminder that he was still wearing his hat. Stephen turned in the doorway. He swept off his hat. He looked at Miles. Nearly bald, even his fair moustache seeming disarranged, Stephen struggled for words.

  “You and your damned Murder Club!” he said clearly and viciously.

  Then he was gone.

  Dr. Fell, clearing his throat, lumbered forward hesitantly with the tea on the tray.

  “Good morning,” he rumbled. He looked uncomfortable. “That was—?”

  “Steve Curtis. Yes.”

  “I—ah--made this tea for you,” said Dr, extending the tray. “I made it all right,” he added argumentatively. “And then it seems to me I began concentrating on something else, so that some half an hour elapsed before I put in the milk. I greatly fear it may be cold.”

  This remark was both made and received in perfect seriousness, since both Dr. Fell and Miles were otherwise preoccupied.

  “That's all right,” said Miles. “Thanks very much.”

  He gulped down the tea, and then put cup and tray on the floor beside him as he sat down in the big chair by the fireplace. Miles was steeling himself for the outburst he knew must come, the admission he was compelled to make.

  “This whole situation,” he said, “is my fault.”

  “Steady!” said Dr. Fell sharply.

  “It's my fault, Dr. Fell. I invited Fay Seton here. The good Lord alone knows why I dd; but there you are. You heard what Steve said?”

  “Which part of what he said?”

  “'Some people cause something-or-other wherever they go.'”

  “Yes. I heard it.”

  “We were all worked up and overwrought last night,” Miles went on. “When Rigaud made that sign against the evil eye, I shouldn't have been surprised to see hell open. In daylight”--he nodded towards the grey and green and sun-gold forest through the eastern windows—“it's hard to be afraid of vampire-teeth. And yet . . .something. Something that troubles the waters. Something that troubles the waters. Something that brings pain and disaster to whatever it touches. Do you understand?”

  “Oh, ah. I understand. But before you blame yourself--”

  “Well?”

  “Hadn't
we better be sure,” said Dr. Fell, “that Miss Fay Seton is the person who troubles the waters?”

  Miles sat up straight with a jerk.

  Dr. Fell, peering sideways at him past the crooked eyeglasses, with a look of Gargantuan distress on his face, fished in the pockets of a baggy alpaca coat. He produced the meerschaum and filled it from an obese pouch. With some effort he lowered himself into a big chair, spreading out over it; he struck a match and lighted the pipe.

  “Sir,” he continued, firing up himself as he blew out smoke, “I could not credit Rigaud's vampire theory from the time I read his manuscript yesterday. I could credit, mind you, a vampire who materialized in the daytime. I could even credit a vampire who killed with a sword-stick. But I could not credit, not at any time, a vampire who pinched somebody's brief-case containing money.

  “That jarred my sense of the fitness of things. That somehow failed to convince. And late last night, when you told me Fay Seton's own story—including, by the way, a point which is not in the manuscript—I had a vision. Through the whole business I saw not real devilishness, but human devilishness.

  “Then came the frightening of your sister.

  “And that was different, by thunder! That was the authentic touch of Satan. It still is.

  “Until we know what was in the room, or what was outside the window, we can't give any king of final verdict on Fay Seton. These two events, the murder of the tower and the frightening of your sister are connected. They interlock. They depend on each other. And they both in some fashion centre round this odd girl with the red hair.” He was silent for a moment. “Forgive the personal question; but do you happen to be in love with her?”

  Miles looked him in the eyes.

  “I don't know,” he replied honestly. “She . . .”

  “Disturbs you?”

  “That's putting it mildly.”

  “Supposing her to be—harrumph!--a criminal of some kind, natural or supernatural, would that have any influence on your attitude?”

  “For the love of Mike, are you warning me against her too?”

  “No!” thundered Dr. Fell. And made a hideous face and smote his fist on the arm of the chair with remarkable vehemence. “On the contrary! If one wool-gathering idea of mine is correct, there are many persons who ought to get down in the dust and beg her pardon. No, sir: I put the question in what Rigaud would call an academic way. Would this (shall we say) make any difference to your attitude?”