The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17

by John Dickson Carr

  There must never be any scandal. But, if she keeps on talking as she's been talking .. ." "Saying what?"

  "Sorry, old chap. I haven't got time to go into it now."

  "Then shall I tell you?"

  "What’s that?"

  "Has she by any chance been saying," asked Holden, "that Margot's death wasn't a natural death?"

  The stars, hitherto bright over a dark garden, were paling with the rising moon. Neither Thorley nor Holden moved.

  "You see," continued the latter, "even if Celia were completely out of her mind"—Holden could not help a shudder going through him—"why are you so anxious I shouldn't meet her? After all, I'm an old friend. I couldn't hurt her. Is it because you knew very well she's as sane as you are, and she's got at the truth that Margot didn't die a natural death; and you're afraid I'd back her up?"

  Holden took a few steps forward: short, shuffling steps.

  "Listen, Thorley," he said, gently. "You're quite right I will back her up. And if you're trying any games against Celia, or even thinking of trying any games against Celia"—his hands opened and shut—"then God help you. That’s just a little warning."

  Thorley, catching the expression of his eyes, stared back at him. Thorley's next remark sounded almost grotesque.

  'You've—you've changed," he complained.

  'I’ve changed? What about yourself?"

  "Changed?" Thorley was equally surprised. "No, I think not. I'm still doing business at the same old stand. And if it comes to any—er—argument between us, we'll see who wins: the old maestro," he tapped himself on the chest complacently "or you." Then his expression grew strained again. "But I think you ought to know, for old friendship's sake, that you're doing me an injustice."

  "Am I? I wish to heaven I could think sol"

  "Ifs true, Don." Thorley hesitated. "Do you want to hear the real reason why I don't want you to meet Celia yet? Can you take it?"

  "Of course I can take it Well?"

  "Weill Celia's practically forgotten you."

  It was the one thing which could knock the props out from under him. And it did. Thorley was sympathetic.

  "Now let's face it, Don," he said. He came over and put his hand on Holden's arm. "At one time Celia was very much in love with you. You, as I understand it—I've only heard this through Margot—once started to make love to her, and then suddenly said you never wanted the subject mentioned again." "I was a blazing fool!"

  "Well," Thorley shrugged his shoulders, "that’ s as it may be. I think you weren't, myself. The point is, you've given her plenty of time to forget it What happens if you turn up now?"

  "Why should anything happen?"

  "Celia's in a very dangerous mental state. Wait a minute! You don't seem to believe that But you can at least believe Margot’s death was a very great blow to her. She adored Margot You agree?"

  He could not help admitting it "Yes. Margot was always a kind of idol."

  "And how many times have you seen Celia since the beginning of the war?"

  "Only twice, since 1940. The Glebes were sent wherever there was trouble going: Africa. Then, in '43, I was drafted for special training with Intelligence. Languages, you see. And .. ."

  "Only twice, since 1940," mocked Thorley, in a sympathetic voice. "Celia isn't well, Don. Mammy Two (do you remember?) always said she'd been worried about her, ever since Celia was a child. I tell you straight, Don: if you turn up from the dead now, and reopen that old emotional business when she's almost forgotten it, I won't be responsible for the consequences. Can't you see that?"

  "In a way. Yes."

  "Fortunately, as I told you, Celia isn't here this evening. But look at that door to the hall there! What do you think the effect would be, if Celia came back and suddenly saw you here now? If you have any feeling for her, Don—any feeling at all —you can't risk that Now can you?"

  Holden pressed his hands to his forehead.

  "But... what do you want me to do?"

  "Go away," answered Thorley firmly.

  "Go away?"

  "Go back down those balcony stairs," Thorley pointed, "the way you came. The way you came when Doris Locke and I thought you were a gh——" For some reason Thorley did not seem to like the word "ghost" He stopped. He glanced over his shoulder, toward the windows. "Funny!" be said. "I thought I heard somebody out there just now. But it wasn't. Never mind."

  He turned back, his hand on Holden's arm. .

  "Go away, Don. After all, the whole thing is your fault. Celia wouldn't thank you for upsetting her by turning up again. You had your chance; and, for whatever reason, you bungled it"

  "It was because ..."

  "I know; it was because you were only making twopence-halfpenny a year; and I honor you for it. Still, you did rather hit her in the face. She's forgotten you now. Think of the disastrous consequences if . . ."

  Again Thorley stopped dead. His hand dropped from Holden's arm. He was staring past Holden's shoulder, staring at the door to the hall, with such an expression that his companion involuntarily swung around.

  And the door to the hall opened, and Celia came in.

  CHAPTER IV

  The door was in the upper right-hand comer of the room as you stood with your back to the windows. It opened inwards; Celia's hand was on the knob, and a dim light burned in the hall behind her. He afterward remembered that she had begun to speak, as though in explanation or warning to anybody who might be there, even while the door was opening.

  "I think I left my handbag in here," the well-remembered voice said rapidly. "I'm going for a walk in the park, and . . ."

  She saw Holden.

  Then—silence.

  All three of them stood as though paralyzed. In a sense this was true; Holden could not have spoken to save his life. He felt the light of the table lamp shining on his face, as though it were a physical heat; he felt himself caught there, unable to retreat even into darkness.

  There was the flesh-and-blood Celia, after so many days and nights of the imagined one. And utterly unchanged. The broad forehead, the arched brows over gray dreaming eyes, the short straight nose, the lips a little quirked at one comer as though from looking wryly at the world, the smooth brown hair parted now on the left-hand side and drawn behind her ears to fall at the back of the neck, and—thank God!—the clear-glowing skin of health.

  If memory plays tricks, we expect them to be poor tricks. In our hearts we, as cursers of hope, never expect a real meeting quite to live up to an imagined one. But for Holden it was the other way around. This was more; it was worse, as a dozen times more poignant. If only he hadn't wrecked it, hadn't hurt Celia, by this sudden . . .

  Seconds passed. He would have said that minutes passed while Celia stood motionless, gripping the knob, slender in a white dress, without stockings and with red shoes, against the brown-painted door.

  Then Celia spoke.

  "They sent you on some kind of special military job," she said. Her voice went into a strange unnatural key; she had to clear her throat several times before she got the voice level. But she made this as a simple statement "They sent you on some kind of special job. That was why you couldn't see me or write to me."

  In an immense void he heard himself speaking.

  "Who told you that?"

  "Nobody told me," Celia answered simply. A hundred memories seemed to be passing behind her eyes. "As soon as I saw you, I just knew."

  Her face seemed to crumple up; she was going to cry.

  "Hello, Don," she said.

  "Hello, Celia."

  "I—I was going over into the park," said Celia; and suddenly looked away from him, out into the hall. He could see the line of her neck, the soft turn of the cheek, shining against the light there. "Would—would you like to go with me?"

  "Of course. Then you didn't believe I was d . . ."

  "I believed it," said Celia, as though trying carefully to define her terms. "I believed it. And yet at the same time I—" She broke off. "Oh, hurry, hurry! P
lease hurry!"

  He went toward her, circling round the sofa and walking very carefully, because his knees were shaking. Also, in that unreal void, he had a wild idea that unless he walked carefully he might put his foot straight through the floor. Yet a certain memory whipped back at him.

  "You said—into the park, Celia. You mean you weren't out this evening? You've been in the house all the time?" "Yes, of ocourse. Why?"

  "Thorley," observed Holden, "you or I are going to have one or two things to talk about But that can wait Until we all go down to Caswall tomorrow."

  Thorley, too, was pale. Not once had Celia glanced in his direction.

  "Until we go down to Caswall tomorrow?" Thorley repeated.

  "Yes. You say you want to sell Caswall. Have you found a purchaser for it?" "No. Not yet. But . . ."

  "I'll buy the place," snarled Holden. He became aware that he was shouting. "In the excitement of the moment I forgot to tell you that the report about an inheritance wasn't a part of the joke. It was true."

  And he followed Celia out of the room.

  Without speaking, in the same void, emotionally blind and helpless, moving like sleepwalkers, these two went toward the front door. They did not speak because they had too much to say. There was no starting point A light in a cut-glass globe, hanging from the lofty ceiling in the hall, shone on the tall full-length portrait of a Regency gentleman with wind-blown hair and a cutaway coat under which was a little brass plate engraved Edward Agnew Devereux, Esq., by Sir H. Raeburn.

  Vaguely he noticed that Celia, who was trembling, glanced at this portrait as though she were remembering something.

  He wanted to tell her . . .

  Yes! He wanted to tell her he had sent a telegram, but that Thorley hadn't opened it Why hadn't Thorley opened it? Telegrams convey a sense of urgency. You open them, as a rule, the instant they are received. If you don't it is because something of overpowering interest distracts your attention at the same time. The telegram had arrived at the same time as small but vigorously grown-up Doris Locke.

  Stop! Instead of being the first of a million explanations, this was only leading thoughts into a blind alley.

  They were outside the house now, in warm and kindly darkness. They slowly crossed the little curve of the drive, out to the pavement of the main road where the white, clear-glowing street lamps showed a deserted road and trees on the other side.

  "We cross here," said Celia.

  "Oh?"

  "Yes," Celia explained very carefully. 'To the other side. About fifty yards up there's a side entrance into the park. This is where we cross."

  Celia's nerves, he was thinking, were magnificent. Flighty, eh? There probably wasn't another woman anywhere who could have received such unexpected news with no more than a change of color or a turn of the eyes. It hadn't affected her at all. He thought so, that is, until—without any warning, when they were partway across the road'—Celia's knees gave way; she would have fallen if he had not caught her.

  "Celia!" he cried.

  But she only sobbed and clung to him, while he held her very tightly.

  The lights of a motorcar, moving rapidly, sprang up from the direction of Regent's Park Crescent and hummed straight toward them: yellow-blazing eyes which swallowed up the road as the car bore down. It is a sober fact that Holden did not even notice this.

  He never realized it until the car—with a whush of air at their elbows, and a scream of curses from the driver—swerved violently past them within a foot's clearance. Then he picked Celia up, carried her back to the curb, set her on her feet under a street lamp, and, while she held him just as tightly, he kissed her mouth for a very long time.

  Presently Celia spoke.

  "Do you know, she said, with her head against his shoulder, still crying, "that's the first time you ever kissed me?"

  "In times gone by, Celia, I was twenty-eight years old and the biggest bloody fool in recorded history."

  "No, you weren't! You were only ..."

  "I was about to point out, anyway, that we have a great deal of lost time to make up for. Shall we continue?"

  "No!" said Celia. Her soft body tightened in his arms. She ran her hands over his shoulders, as though to make sure of his reality. She threw her head back and looked up at him: her lips smiling, the imaginative fine-drawn face tear stained, the shining wet gray eyes searching his face—searching it, and searching it again, with intensity—under the white pallor of the street lamp.

  "I mean," she added, "not here! Not now! I want to think about you. I want to get used to you."

  "I love you, Celia. I always have." "Are we in love?"

  Don Holden felt lightheaded with happiness.

  "My dear Celia," he began oracularly, "consider indisputable proof in this matter. Did you hear what the driver of that car said when he roared past?"

  She looked puzzled. "He—he swore at us."

  "Yes. To be exact, he said 'god-damnedest thing I ever saw.' The remark, though inelegantly phrased, contains a deep philosophical truth. Shall we search the story of famous lovers ... of Daphnis and Chloe, of Hero and Leander, of Pyramus and Thisbe, of (to be more prosaic about it) Victoria and Albert... for many instances of two persons standing locked in each other's arms in the middle of a main motor road?"

  "I love you when you talk like that," Celia said seriously. "It's not exactly romantic; but it seems to make everything so much more fun. Where have you been, Don? It was rather awful. Where have you been?"

  He tried to explain a little of it, and somewhat incoherently.

  "You—you got Scharfuhrer von Steuben? That Dachau man who said he'd never be taken alive?"

  "He had to be taken alive. They're hanging him this month."

  "But—what happened?" (He felt her shudder) "Well, it took some time to run him down. Then there was a dust-up." "Please, Don. What happened?"

  "He'd got himself up disguised as a priest. We shot it out in a churchyard about three miles from Rome. I nicked him through the kneecap, and it was so painful he just rolled over and screeched. The funny thing was ..."

  "Yes, Don?" she pressed him more tightly.

  "Do you remember that time we met, in Caswall churchyard, under the trees, after the wedding? And I made such a bash of things? Weill Once or twice when I saw Steuben's dial, under the broad-brimmed priest’s hat, looking at me around a tombstone over the top of a Luger, I kept thinking that a number of important incidents in my life seemed to be happening in churchyards."

  There was a pause, and a sudden odd change in her mood.

  "Do you know," cried Celia, suddenly looking up and around as though she had just realized it, "we're standing under a street lamp? And there'll probably be a policeman along at any minute? Lets go across to the park, Don. Please!"

  They crossed the road hurriedly. Some fifty yards up, as Celia had said, there was a side entrance. (They did not see the immense dark shadow, apparently too huge to be real, which, as soon as they were gone, seemed to materialize from behind the trees guarding the little crescent of Gloucester Gate, and stretch out after them. No; they did not see it.)

  The night fragrance of the park enclosed them. A broad path, of fine-crushed brown gravel, stretched away into dimness through lines of thick-leaved dwarf chestnut trees like the alley of a formal garden. Once into the shadow of the trees, they became aware of moonlight: clear moonlight, of soap-bubble luminousness, making images even more unreal. Celia, in her white dress, might have seemed insubstantial if he had not held her tightly.

  Celia spoke in a small, troubled voice.

  "Don. I want to tell you something. I feel I'm partly— becoming myself again."

  "How do you mean?"

  "When I thought you were dead . . ."

  "Don't! That’s all over now!"

  "No. - Please let me finish." She stopped and faced him. "When I thought you were dead, I didn't seem to care about anything. Then, at Christmas, Margot died. Did Thorley tell you?"

  "Yes”


  There was nothing more he could say. A light breeze, the first stirring on that hot night, made a whispering among leaves.

  "You know how it is when you're," she pressed her hand against her breast, "you're all mixed up inside. You get a thing, an idee fixe, about whatever seems most important. Not that this matter about Margot isn't important It is. But it doesn't seem to matter so much now."

  She paused for a moment

  "So," Celia went on, "you do things you'd never dream of doing, in the ordinary way. Just as I did after Christmas. When you look back on them," she laughed a little, "they seem grotesque. I'm frightened now at my own temerity. And yet I was right! I was right!"

  He put his hands on her shoulders. "My dear, what are you talking about?"

  "Listen, Don. We're not out taking a casual walk, really. We're—meeting somebody."

  "Oh? Who is it?"

  "Dr. Shepton. There's a secret that so far I haven't told to a soul outside the family, except Dr. Shepton."

  "He was Margot's doctor, wasn't he?"

  "Yes. I knew he was coming to town today to see a friend of his, in Devonshire Place: a psychiatrist. About me. But I couldn't ask Dr. Shepton to come to the house. I couldn't! They spy on me. They think I'm mad, you know."

  Despite the slight jar of hearing that word from Celia's own lips, as though she had uttered a blasphemy, he almost laughed at her.

  "Do they, now?" he said mockingly.

  "Didn't Thorley tell you?"

  "Yes," replied Holden. Wrath boiled up inside him, hurting and blinding: the memory of Thorley's glutinous voice, trying to spoil happiness and pull apart dreams that had become realities. "Yes, by God! He told me. And the more I see of Mr. Thorley Ruddy Marsh, the fellow I once thought was my best friend—!"

  "Don. You don't believe I'm ... ? No! Please! Don't kiss me for just a minute. I want you to understand something."

  The deep earnestness of her voice held him bade

  "If I go on with this," Celia whispered, "something dreadful will probably happen. And yet it's right. Besides, I don't see how I can back out now. That one man would have been safe enough, the old friend of Mammy Two. But now that I've actually written to the police . . ."