One

One night in midsummer, at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, Arthur Fane murdered a nineteen-year-old girl named Polly Allen. That was the admitted fact.

The girl was only an incident in his life; but she had fallen for him, and was threatening to make trouble with his wife. She even mentioned marriage. In Cheltenham, everybody has to be respectable. Arthur Fane, as head of the firm of Fane, Fane & Randall, family solicitors, had to be particularly respectable.

So, one night when Vicky Fane, Uncle Hubert, and the two servants were away, he invited this girl to his house. She came there secretly, expecting a party, and was strangled with her own imitation-silk scarf. During the dark hours of the night Arthur Fane put her body into his car, drove up Leckhampton Hill, and buried her near the old quarry there.

Polly Allen was a girl of doubtful origins, who drifted from town to town, reasonably respectable but with no family or particular friends; it seemed unlikely that anybody would inquire after her. And, in fact, nobody ever did. Her murder remains unproved and in general even unsuspected to the present day.

But two persons found out about it — Hubert Fane, Arthur's uncle, when it happened; and Vicky Fane, his wife, a little later.

To Vicky the realization came with slowly growing horror. She was a pretty, likeable, pleasant girl of twenty-five years as opposed to Arthur's thirty-eight. She had been married to him for two years, and was beginning quietly, strongly to dislike him even before this happened.

Realization came in patches. On the day following the murder, Vicky found Polly Allen's handkerchief, with Polly's name stitched in it, pushed down out of sight behind the cushion of an easy chair in the drawing room. She burned the handkerchief in case the servants should find it. After a time she made discreet inquiries, and discovered that Polly seemed to have left town. That meant only casual infidelity, of course. But then, during the hot nights with the moon shining on him, Arthur Fane began to talk in his sleep.

Vicky listened, white-faced in the dark. She had to know, and she guessed who else knew, by his altered position in the household since the night of July fifteenth.

Hubert Fane.

Uncle Hubert Fane had come to stay with them in April. "Just a brief visit, my boy, while I look round." He arrived back in England vaguely from "the colonies." He was supposed to have money, and was greeted by Arthur with expansive hospitality. But by the end of May he was still there, without giving any sign of getting a place for himself or even of standing his round of drinks when they dropped in at The Plough.

On the contrary, he began borrowing a pound or two, here and there: "until I can cash a check, dear boy." By June, Arthur was fed up. By July he was on the point of bluntly giving Uncle Hubert his walking papers, when the night of July fifteenth changed all that.

Uncle Hubert was then moved to a sunnier bedroom on the side of the house facing the front lawn. His borrowings became more frequent. If he expressed preferences to Arthur in the matter of a dish for dinner, Vicky was curtly told to get it.

Now this makes out Hubert Fane to be a common variety of blackmailer, which he was not. Vicky liked him; everybody liked him. Hubert Fane, fiftyish, was a lean, distinguished-looking man with gray-white hair. Vicky knew him for an old rogue; but a modest, unassuming, almost kind-hearted rogue. He always dressed well, in shadings of gray; he was widely traveled, well-read, and of irreproachable manners. Though he talked in somewhat elaborate, flowery sentences, he talked entertainingly and not without wit.

Even the retired army officers of Cheltenham liked him. These he treated with a sort of grave deference: as, say, a subaltern would treat his colonel. Without mentioning his rank or regiment, he contrived to suggest that he too was experienced in campaigns — not as much as they, of course; but still enough to listen to their stories with appreciation. "Not a bad chap," was the verdict; "not a bad chap at all."

So Uncle Hubert knew; and, under pressure from Vicky, admitted it, though not in such a way as could compromise him.

Vicky never forgot the afternoon when all this came out. It was a hot afternoon towards the end of August, when all the windows were set open and not a breath of air stirred. She sat with Hubert in the back drawing room (where Polly Allen had been strangled), looking out over a scarlet rose garden.

Uncle Hubert sat opposite her, smiling an agreeable smile under his large nose.

"But— murder!" Vicky whispered.

"Sh-h!" urged Uncle Hubert, not at all easy about this himself. "It was indiscreet," he conceded. "I cannot help feeling it was indiscreet. Still, there it is. These things happen."

Vicky looked at him helplessly.

Brown-haired, blue-eyed, with a sturdy body and a taste for outdoor exercise, she might have been any young upper-middle-class wife. She was a good wife; she managed Arthur's home efficiently, and had a way with servants. Everything seemed normal except this one black image.

Uncle Hubert cleared his throat.

"I am sure," he pursued, "that if you talk the matter over with Arthur, quietly—"

"Talk it over? I couldn't even go near him with a story like that!"

Uncle Hubert regarded her anxiously.

"Then I hope, my dear, that you are not meditating any such regrettable step as — er — going near the authorities? There is the family honor to consider."

"Family honor!" said Vicky. Her sick rage blinded her. "Family honor! All you're thinking about is your meal-ticket. You've been blackmailing Arthur and you know it."

Uncle Hubert looked genuinely shocked and hurt. His distress was, in fact, so evident that at any other time Vicky would have comforted him.

"Now there, my dear," he pointed out, "you wrong me. You really do wrong me. Candor compels me to admit that I may have mentioned the matter to the boy, and expressed my sympathy for him in his awkward predicament. That is all. No transaction of a sordid financial nature, I give you my word, has ever been so much as mentioned between us."

"No," said Vicky thoughtfully. "You wouldn't need to. Either of you."

"Thank you, my dear. If I seem to sense some latent irony in your tone, I trust I am well-bred enough to overlook it. Thank you."

"How did you learn about it?"

"I was curious. That Arthur should send you overnight to visit your mother was reasonable enough. That he should give the servants the night off was still plausible. But that he should provide me with a ticket to hear Gigli sing at the Colston Hall in Bristol and offer to pay both my railway fare and my hotel bill there, was simply incredible.

"Nor did I like his extra remark that he would be working very late at the office. Unsuspicious as I am by nature, I still felt that something must be up. So I did not go to Bristol. I returned here, feeling that in justice to you I ought to keep an eye on him."

"And you sow—?"

"Well…"

"Yet you didn't interfere?"

The old villain had at least the grace to look uncomfortable here. But his tone was persuasive.

"My dear, what could I do? I could not know what was in Arthur's mind. I anticipated something of a merely vulgar nature; and was looking forward to it, I must confess, with considerable interest. The unfortunate incident occurred before anybody could have interfered. It was on that sofa there, where you are sitting now…."

Vicky leaped up from it, feeling as though someone had squeezed her heart.

"Afterwards I could hardly embarrass the boy by betraying my presence. There is such a thing as decency, my dear."

This wasn't real, Vicky told herself.

She folded her arms, cradling them as though she were cold, and began to walk up and down the room.

It was the same pleasant room, with the overstuffed chairs covered in white cretonne, the polished hardwood floor, with rugs scattered on it, which was badly sprung in places and had a tendency to creak near the windows at the back. Vicky looked round the cream-painted walls; at the red-brick fireplace, swept and scrubbed; at the flowers on the grand piano. It was all the same, yet it was all changed.

Because Arthur, Arthur had strangled a girl here. Odd. That was her first thought: the oddness of it. Yet was it so odd? She thought of Arthur: the thick-set figure, the dark complexion, the rare laugh. Pleasant enough, unless you got him out of his intellectual depths. The soul of neatness, and not very liberal with money.

As a lover, she could not get on with him. He was both violent and unskilled. And this prompted dangerous thoughts. In two years of marriage, he had awakened Vicky Fane just enough so that she realized several things. In the proper hands, she realized, she might be…

Frank Sharpless's, for instance.

A word to the police—

Vicky shut the thought from her mind. She hated herself for the disloyalty of these thoughts. Arthur was her husband. You could not share the same life, the same house, the same room with a person for two years, twenty-four months, heaven knew how many hours, without conceiving some sort of tolerant liking for him. You had to protect him, whatever happened.

For the life of her, she could not remember now why she had married him. That was all unreal, an engulfed past. At the time he had seemed rather a smoldering, Byronic sort of person; and, as her mother had pointed out, a girl must get married. Dangerous thoughts again, moving through her mind like satyrs.

Once again Hubert Fane cleared his throat.

"My dear," he said with solicitude, "you are not well. This heat is too much for you."

Vicky stopped by the fireplace, and began to laugh hysterically. Hubert shushed her.

"However, since we must pursue this matter, do you mind if I touch on a rather delicate subject?"

"Can you think of any subject more delicate," said Vicky, "than the one we've been talking about?"

"I see no reason," said Hubert, "why this regrettable affair should mar our lives—"

"When every ring at the door-bell may mean—"

Uncle Hubert considered this.

"No, I do not think so. The boy planned with his usual care and thoroughness. But as I was saying. The older you grow, my dear, the more you will come to realize that the secret of a successful life lies in compromise."

"I wish the police thought that."

Hubert was unruffled.

"Now, Arthur appreciates this," he said, not without satisfaction. "And it leads me to my point. I cannot have failed to observe, as a paternal uncle, that your married life with Arthur, though outwardly happy and well-thought-of by the neighbors, has been not without its difficulties."

Vicky did not comment.

"As a young woman, you are, of course, fond of male society." He paused. "Captain Sharpless, for instance."

Vicky stopped short. Her back was towards him, and she was glad of it, for he could not see the color that crept into her face. It was not guilt; it was mortification that this old crook should notice everything. But her wits whirled as well. Was he, she wondered, trying blackmail tactics on her now?

"And the same, with regard to the opposite sex," pursued Hubert, "applies to Arthur himself. Have you observed that he appears to find Miss Ann Browning extremely attractive?"

Again Vicky did not comment.

"Well!" said Hubert, twinkling like a benevolent deity. "As the platitude has it, live and let live. With the proper show of discretion on all sides, I see no reason why you should not all be happy without troubling your heads about Polly Allen: a matter which is, after all, best left to the theological authorities. The thing is done. To brood over it now would be both morbid and unprofitable. In fact, I am not sure I cannot find Scriptural authority for this." Vicky felt rather sick.

"You could find Scriptural authority for anything," she blazed at him, holding to the edge of the mantelpiece and turning round, "you blackm…!"

"My dear," said Hubert, genuinely concerned, "you must not upset yourself like this. It will be bad for you. And above all things you must look your best, and go on as though nothing had happened. Captain Sharpless and Miss Browning are coming to dinner tonight, I think." He stopped suddenly, reflecting. "Now that I remember it, I took the liberty of inviting a guest of my own."

"Oh, God!"

"Yes. A doctor. A psychiatrist, whose opinion should be of interest to you. Dr. Rich, his name is: Richard Rich. I knew him many years ago, and ran into him this morning in the bar at The Fleece. He has never been a great success in this world. I thought a good dinner might cheer him up." Hubert's eyes were anxious, like those of a well-trained dog. "You don't mind?"

Vicky thought that she was past minding anything.

She walked to the two windows at the back of the room, stopping by one of them to tap her fingers on the sill and stare out into the hot, bright garden. The floor squeaked sharply under her feet there, reminding her that it ought to be seen to; but how did you see to such things?

Her mind hovered round such trifles. An extra guest for dinner meant rearrangement, and Arthur was a murderer, and at any minute a large policeman might come tapping at the door. Sturdy, well-shaped in her brown jumper and black skirt, with tan stockings and shoes, Vicky stood at the bright window with her head lowered, nagging at herself for disloyal thoughts. Her mind was a bright blank of doubt and misery.

"Uncle Hubert," she said abruptly, "what was she like?"

"Who, my dear?"

"This girl. Polly Allen."

"Now, my dear, I repeat that you must not—"

"What was she like?"

"To tell you the truth," Hubert replied, after some hesitation, "she reminded me a little of Ann Browning. Not of Miss Browning's social class, of course; a few years younger, eighteen or nineteen, perhaps; dark hair instead of fair. But with something of the same air about her. Pretty, I should say; though when I saw her last she was no longer pretty."

Vicky clenched her fists. Her thoughts ran round and round again, the same scratchy groove like a caught phonograph needle.

What a situation! What a situation! What a situation!

Two

On the morning of the following day — Wednesday, the twenty-third of August — Mr. Philip Courtney walked out of The Plough Hotel into the sunshine of Regent Street.

Philip Courtney was at peace with all the world.

It was eleven o'clock. He had eaten a late breakfast, smoked the first, most satisfying pipe of the day, and glanced leisurely through the papers. He had nothing on his mind until evening, and an easy job then.

Cheltenham struck him as being as pleasant a town as any in England. He liked its white-painted, geranium-bed dignity; its spacious, shady streets; its suggestion of Bath without the latter town's cramped and dingy lanes. He would go for a stroll before lunch.

And so he was hesitating on the sunny pavement when a voice spoke behind him.

"Phil Courtney! You old horse!"

Courtney turned.

"Frank Sharpless!" he said.

The sight of a khaki uniform was not, in that year nineteen thirty-eight, bo frequent in Cheltenham as it is today. Frank Sharpless, a captain in a Sapper regiment, gleamed with all his buttons.

"You old horse!" he repeated. "What are you doing here? On a job?" "Yes. And you?"

"Leave. I'm visiting my father; he lives here." Sharpless gestured hospitably towards the hotel. "Come in and have one?"

"With pleasure."

In the American Bar upstairs, at a table by the window with pint tankards between them, they regarded each other with real pleasure.

"Phil," said Sharpless, "I'm going to Staff College."

Courtney considered this. "That's good, I suppose?"

"Good?" echoed the other, with hollow incredulity. "It's the biggest damn honor you can get, I'd have you know! I go there next year. Six months, and then anything can happen. I'll probably wind up as a colonel, one day. Can you imagine me as a colonel?" He peered round to look at the three pips on his shoulder-strap, as though trying to envisage what it would look like.

In person Frank Sharpless was a rangy, dark-haired, good-looking fellow, with a real good humor which made him liked everywhere. Also, he had a first-rate mathematical brain. But he did not seem very adept at concealing his feelings. Though he was full of beans this morning, yet he clearly had something on his mind, worrying him.

"Many congratulations," said Courtney, "and all the luck in the world. Cheer-ho."

"Cheer-ho.".

"Your father's pleased, I imagine?"

"Oh, pleased as Punch! — Look here, Phil." After taking a deep pull at the tankard, Sharpless set it down abruptly. But he appeared to change his mind again, and edged away from what he had been thinking about. "Still ghosting, are you?"

When it is stated that Philip Courtney was a ghost, and a real king-specter among ghosts, this means merely that he was a ghost-writer.

He wrote, in short, those autobiographies and reminiscences of well-known persons, eminent, famous, or merely notorious, which the well-known people signed. Phil Courtney was also a conscientious craftsman who really enjoyed his work.

He was a stickler for realism. He tried to make the autobiography of a celebrated harlot sound as though it had actually been written by the celebrated harlot, if she had. been endowed with a little — just a very little — more culture and imagination. He tried to make the reminiscences of a sporting peer sound as though they had actually been written by the sporting peer, if he had been endowed with a little — just a very little-more brains. And this pleased everybody.

To him these books were completely satisfying. They represented so many characters he had created, so many personalities of which he was a part, with the advantage over fiction that these characters were real. You could find them in the telephone book or, if sufficiently exasperated by their temperament, kick them in the pants.

Up to this day Phil Courtney, despite minor squalls on the part of his sitters, had been a happy man. "Still ghosting," he admitted. "Who is it this time?"

"Quite a bigwig, they tell me. Fellow from the War Office, by the way."

"Oh? What's his name?"

"Merrivale. Sir Henry Merrivale."

Frank Sharpless, who had again lifted the tankard to his lips, slowly set h down untasted.

"You," he said slowly, like one anxious to define the terms carefully, "you are going to write the reminiscences of Sir Henry Merrivale?"

"Yes. He told the publisher he hadn't time to write 'em himself, but he didn't mind dictating it. Of course that's what a lot of them say, and as a rule it doesn't mean much. I shall have to edit it—"

"Edit it?" roared Sharpless. "You'll have to burn it."

"Meaning what? They tell me he was a big shot during the War, and that he's been mixed up in any number of well-known murder cases."

"And no shadow of doom," said Sharpless, eyeing Courtney with real curiosity in his good-looking, rather fine-drawn face, "no shadow of doom darkens your fair day. No warning voice whispers in your ear: 'Get out of here, and stay out while you've still got your reason.' Well, it won't be long now."

"Here! Oi! What is all this?"

"Look here, old boy," said Sharpless, drawing a deep breath and putting his finger-tips on the edge of the table, "I don't want to discourage you. So I will only say this. You are not going to write the reminiscences of Sir Henry Merrivale. You think you are; but you're not."

"Why not? If you mean the old boy's temperamental," smiled Courtney, with the confidence of one whose tact has handled a popular actress and a Russian Grand Duke, "I think I can promise that—"

''Rash youth!" said Sharpless, shaking his head and fixing his companion with a moody eye. "Cripes! Was there ever such rashness?" He frowned. "I didn't know the old boy was down here, though. Where's he staying?"

From his pocket Courtney fished out pipe, pouch, and address book. He lit the pipe and leafed through the book.

"Here we are. 'Care of Major Adams, 6 Fitzherbert Avenue, Old Bath Road, Leckhampton, Cheltenham.' I'm told he first went to Gloucester, to see the Chief Constable about some criminal business, and then came on here for a rest."

He paused, caught by the expression on Sharpless's face. It was the same expression he had seen there a few minutes ago. Sharpless ran a hand through his dark, wiry hair. Then he clenched his fist, and seemed to meditate hammering it on the table. Instead, after looking round to make sure that the sunlit room was empty except for the barman, he leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a whisper.

"Look here, Phil."

"Yes?"

"That address. Reminds me of some friends of mine. The Fanes. They live close to there." "Well?"

"Phil, I've gone and fallen for a married woman." There was a silence.

"No! — strike me blind!" said Sharpless, lifting his right hand as though to take an oath, and drawing back a little. "I mean it. It's serious. It's the real thing."

His voice was still a fierce whisper. Horizontal wrinkles furrowed his forehead.

"But that would…" Courtney began. "Staff College," he added warningly.

"Yes! It'd play the devil! Don't I know it? But I can't help it, and that's all there is about h!"

"Who is she?"

"Victoria Fane, her name is. Vicky. They live in Fitzherbert Avenue too. Big, white, square house, set back from the road; you can't miss it as you go by. She's got a swine of a husband who swindles people under the guise of a solicitor. God, Phil, she's wonderful. I won't want to bore you with all this…"

"You're not boring me. You know that. Go on."

Sharpless drew a deep breath. "I was out there to dinner last night. I'm going again tonight."

"Dinner on two successive nights?"

"Well, there's an excuse. Last night, you see, there were six of us to dinner. Vicky, and this swine Fane— I know I oughtn't to talk about my host like that, but he is a swine and that's all there is to it — and Fane's uncle, and a wishy-washy gal named Ann Browning, and a doctor, and myself. This doctor is one of the kind (what do you call 'em?) who tells you when you've got complexes."

"Psychiatrist?"

"That's it! Psychiatrist. Rich, his name is! Dr. Rich. Well, this Dr. Rich, who's a genial old buffer like John Bull and looks as though he'd got no nonsense about him, started talking about his work. In the course of it he said that he very often used hypnotism."

"Used what?"

"Hypnotism," explained Sharpless, making mesmeric passes in the air by way of illustration. "Yes?"

"Now, that interested me. I've always thought it was a good deal of a fake. That's to say: I've seen 'em on the stage, where they fetch somebody up out of the audience and make him quack like a duck. But there always seemed to me something very, very phoney about it."

"There's nothing phoney about it, Frank."

"No. That's what Rich told me, and they all backed him up. I'm afraid I got a bit argumentative. I said I didn't maintain it couldn't be done; I said all I maintained was that I should like to see it done where there was no possibility of a fake.

"I said, furthermore, 'Suppose you could put a person under hypnotic influence like that, so that he or she was absolutely controlled by your will, would that person do anything you ordered?' I was thinking of the dangers of it, you see. I said, 'For instance, could you get a girl to do thus-and-so?' "

Sharpless paused.

He brooded, rubbing the aide of his jaw, but with a subdued twinkle in his eye nevertheless. He had a charm of naivete which enabled him to get away with even worse social bombshells than this.

"It wasn't a very tactful question, I admit," he said.

"Under the circumstances," said Courtney, "perhaps not. Well?"

"Well, Dr. Rich got very grave. He said, yes, you could, if the girl were already inclined that way; and that it was one of the dangers of hypnotism in the hands of unprincipled persons. I saw I'd rather dropped a brick, so I tried to cover it up by saying that what I meant was: could you get her to commit a crime? I said: 'If a victim is really under the will of a hypnotist, wouldn't there be the devil to pay if you told her to commit robbery or murder?' "

Courtney drew at his pipe. "And what did Dr. Rich have to say to that?"

"He explained it. The explanation sound s reasonable, I'm bound to admit."

"What is it?"

"That under hypnotism you will only do what you're capable of doing in waking moments. Like this! Suppose Vicky Fane walks into this room now. We hypnotize her, and then say, 'Now walk up to the bar and have a big drink of whiskey.' Vicky doesn't drink much, but she does indulge occasionally. So she'd go and do it like a soldier. You follow that?"

"Yes."

"But suppose you got a real, honest, fanatical teetotaler; a Band-of-Hoper; somebody like Lady Astor, for instance. After hypnotizing her—"

"Beautiful thought."

"Shut up. After hypnotizing her, you plank down half a tumbler of whiskey and say, 'All right, polish that off.' But she wouldn't. She couldn't. She might be in agony, because the hypnotist's will is law. She might even pick up the glass. But she wouldn't. If she did, it would mean there was something wrong with her teetotaler's principles.

"Finally, Dr. Rich said he regretted he hadn't got certain things there that night, or he would show me an interesting experiment which he thought I should find conclusive. That made me suspicious again, and I asked why he couldn't do the experiment now. He said it required certain properties.

"Whereupon Fane's uncle — decent old chap — suggested that we should meet again for dinner the next night, the same lot of us, and Dr. Rich could show us the experiment. Fane, the blister, didn't like this a bit. But I gather that Uncle Hubert is the wealthy relative whom Fane wants to keep on the good side of, so he managed to cough up an invitation. So it's dinner there again tonight."

Again Sharpless paused, uneasily.

"What sort of experiment, Frank?"

"I don't know," admitted Sharpless. His voice was heavy with worry. "Look here, Phil. Would you say that I was what-d'ye-callit? Thingummybob? Psychic?"

Courtney laughed outright.

"All right. Laugh. Your own doom will soon be on you anyhow. But I tell you—" Sharpless brought his fist slowly down on the table—"I tell you there's something funny going on in that house. Under the surface."

Courtney was direct. "You mean you think the lady's husband suspects your intentions?"

Sharpless hesitated, so Courtney prodded again.

"How far has the affair gone?"

"It hasn't gone anywhere yet. Hang it, I haven't even got any reason to suppose she cares two pins for me!" Sharpless brooded."And yet I do know, too. It was last week. At a damn concert in the Promenade. They were playing Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes … if you laugh I'll murder you!"

Courtney showed no disposition to laugh. After surveying him narrowly* with defiant embarrassment, Sharpless stared hard at the contents of his tankard and spoke in a muttering voice.

"She doesn't love the swine Fane. That I do know. Not that they don't put up a good front! This Dr. Rich may be hot stuff as a psychologist, but he can't see psychology when it's under his nose. I rode part of the way home with him on the bus last night. And he kept saying what an ideal couple the Fanes were, and how pleasant it was to see such things in this age of divorce, until I could have landed him one."

"H'm."

"But when I say there's something funny going on there, I don't mean that, exactly. I mean something else that's queer. And I'm not looking forward to tonight. I wish you could come along."

"I'd like to. But I've got a nine o'clock appointment with Sir Henry Merrivale."

Sharpless moved his shoulders.

"Well?" he said. "You've heard about it now. What's your advice?"

"My advice is: be careful."

"It's all very well to sit there and say that, Phil. But I can't be careful."

"Well, what do you want? Divorce?"

"A divorce, even if Fane consented," said Sharpless, "would mean good-by to the Staff College. But I'm beginning to think-"

"You're beginning to think: never mind the Staff College. To hell with the Staff College. You don't want to go to the place anyway. Is that it?"

"No, not that, exactly. Something like it, though. And, in any case, don't sit there puffing your pipe and looking like the Wise Man of the East. This is serious. I want advice; not sarcasm. Can't you rally round and offer a helpful suggestion?"

Courtney stirred with discomfort. Though he was only half a dozen years older than Sharpless's twenty-seven, he felt at once far older and yet less experienced.

"Look here, Frank. I can't solve your problem for you, and neither can anybody else. It's something you've got to work out for yourself."

"Oh, Lord!"

"It's true. If you love this girl, and she loves you, and you can see a way out without too much scandal, I should say go ahead. Have the girl and the Staff College too. Only for the love of Mike make sure you know what you're doing."

Sharpless did not reply.

His shoulders hunched up, and his gaze strayed out of the window down into the street. His eyes, ordinarily gray, were now almost black; the brows pinched together above them.

'That's that, then." He turned round from the window, like a man coming to a decision, and spoke in a different voice. "The governor'll want to see you. What about coming along home with me for lunch?"

"Glad to. But if-"

"No. Let's forget it." Sharpless drained his tankard and got up. "But I wish tonight were over. Cripes, how I wish tonight were over!"

It might have been instinct; it was certainly prophecy. Imperceptibly, a design had now been completed. The arrow was fitted, nock to the string; the bow was drawn to the full arc of its power. You could now only wait for the thud as the shaft went home.

Three

"If everyone is ready," suggested Dr. Richard Rich, "shall we begin the experiment?"

It was nearly nine o'clock. The long, spacious back drawing room was lighted only by a bridge lamp, with a white parchment shade, beside the sofa.

Arthur Fane had always been punctilious about the ceremony of dressing for dinner. But tonight, as a concession to the heat, he had so far unbent as to wear a soft shirt with his dinner jacket. So did the other men with the exception of Frank Sharpless, whose black-and-scarlet mess jacket fitted tightly round the usual stiff shirt and black tie. Vicky Fane wore dark violet, with full skirt and sleeves. Ann Browning was in white. All stood out vividly, even in shadow, against the cream-painted walk.

The windows at the narrow end of the room were open. But their curtains had been partly drawn, so that only the last shreds of daylight entered when Richard Rich took up a position with his back to the red-brick fireplace.

Dr. Rich was a short, stocky, comfortable-looking man in an untidy dinner jacket. He had thrust his hands into the pockets of it. He was bald except for an unexpected brush of hair, black streaked with gray, which began half way down the back of his skull and curled out over his collar. It formed the only vaguely theatrical touch to an otherwise stout, ordinary personality. His round face was slightly flushed with the heat, or with the brandy he had taken after dinner. He was smiling.

"And when we do begin," he continued, softly over a note of heavy brass. "I think Captain Sharpless will understand why I couldn't proceed last night."

Sharpless waved this aside.

"All right. But what is this experiment, exactly?"

"That's what I want to know," agreed Arthur Fane rather sharply. "What are you going to do?"

Dr. Rich smiled in a maddeningly cryptic way.

"With your permission," he said, "I first of all propose to place one of you under hypnosis."

"You're not going to place me under hypnosis," said Arthur, "and get me to make a fool of myself in public. Besides, I don't hold with this. It's — it's morbid."

"You would be a bad hypnotic subject anyway," smiled Dr. Rich. "No. With her permission, the person I propose to use for the experiment is Mrs. Fane."

For some reason, this created a minor sensation.

Vicky was sitting bolt upright in a slender chair not far from the fireplace, her hands folded in her lap. She turned her head round, surprised.

"Me?" she asked. "But why? I mean, why me?"

"First, Mrs. Fane, because you're the best hypnotic subject here. The second reason — well, you'll understand the second reason when we have finished."

"But I should have thought…"

Vicky did not complete die sentence. What she evidently meant, to judge by the direction of her glance, was that she thought the best subject would be Miss Ann Browning.

Ann Browning was sitting in shadow, in one of the white easy chairs. She bent forward absorbedly, in deep and eager interest. Though about the same age as Vicky, she seemed to have little of the letter's brisk practicality. She was smaller than Vicky, and more slender. Her hair, gold where the light struck it, was bound round her head. Her skin, against the white gown, had merely a clear glow as opposed to Vicky's faint tan.

Dr. Rich's shrewd little eyes interpreted that glance, and answered it.

"You would be wrong, Mrs. Fane," he said.

"Wrong?"

"I suppose you share most people's view that the easiest hypnotic subject is a sensitive or highly strung person? That, as any doctor will tell you, is the exact reverse of true."

Arthur Fane sat up.

"Do you call me a sensitive or highly strung person?" he asked incredulously.

"No, Mr. Fane. You are just dogged. You would fight the influence. I doubt whether anybody could hypnotize you."

"By George, you're right there," breathed Arthur. He was flattered and pleased; and, as usual when pleased, his rare, pleasant smile lit up the dark face. He took two puffs at a dead cigar. "But why has it got to be any of us? Why can't we have one of the maids in, and experiment on her?"

"Arthur, they'd talk!" said Vicky warningly.

Her husband saw the justice of this, and subsided. But he did not seem pleased. He kept darting glances, rather hungry glances, in the direction of Ann Browning. Vicky saw these looks too.

"Well, Mrs. Fane?" prompted Rich.

Vicky laughed a little. "I don't mind being the victim, exactly. But it's as Arthur says. I don't want to make a fool of myself in public. This — this is the business where your subconscious mind is supposed to be released, isn't it?"

"Only in a sense. You will be under the control of my will, and must obey my orders."

"Yes, that's what I mean," returned Vicky, rather hastily. "I mean, I shouldn't want to be made to quack like a duck, or go up and kiss somebody, or anything like that."

Throughout the foregoing, Uncle Hubert Fane, who was smoking one of Arthur's best cigars with relish, had several times looked very thoughtful. A watcher might even have said that he seemed apprehensive. Once, at the mention of the subconscious mind, he cleared his throat as though to intervene.

But Dr. Rich forestalled him.

"Mrs. Fane," Rich said gravely, "please remember that this is not a side-show or an exhibition of parlor magic. It is a serious scientific experiment. I'm not even sure that I can bring it off. I give you my word that you will be asked to do nothing which will embarrass you or hold you up to ridicule."

"Come on, Vicky! Be a sport!" urged Ann Browning, in her soft, attractive voice.

"You promise?" Vicky asked Rich.

"I promise."

"All right," said Vicky, lifting her shoulders and smiling not without wryness. "Let the dirty work begin. What do you want me to do?"

There was a general expelling of breaths in the long room.

Rich turned round to the mantelpiece. From the top of it, beside the clock, he took down a cardboard shoe-box which he had long ago placed there in preparation for this.

"Now, Mrs. Fane! First of all, I must tell something to the others which it is necessary that you shall not hear. Would you mind going out into the hall for a moment, until I call you in?"

"What is all this?" demanded Sharpless, after a pause. "Charades?"

Rich swung round on him.

"Captain Sharpless, if you will remain silent, and be content to watch an experiment which you yourself challenged me to perform, I think you'll understand what it is in a very few minutes."

"Sorry. No offense intended. But—"

"You don't mind, Mrs. Fane?"

"No, not at all."

Rich had removed the cover from the cardboard box. As Vicky rose to her feet and stepped past him, it was impossible that she should not have at least a brief glimpse inside. Rich replaced the cover on the box rather hastily. Putting it under his arm, he went to open the door for her.

The door was in the same wall as the fireplace: that is, the long wall at right-angles to the windows, but far away from the windows towards the other end of the room.

Rich opened the door for Vicky, stood aside as she went out, and closed it again. It was a good heavy door; but it closed imperfectly and the latch did not catch. As Rich turned back to the others, the door creaked an inch or two open.

Sharpless was about to call his attention to this when the doctor's eye caught them again.

"I have in this box," he said in his soft, heavy bass voice, "two exhibits. Exhibit A — a rubber dagger."

"See here!" — began Arthur Fane.

"Yes?" prompted Ann Browning.

Rich held up the toy dagger. Its blade was painted silvery gray to represent a patchy and unconvincing-looking metal; its handle was black. Without any sense of incongruity, Rich bent the soft rubber back and forth.

"Bought this morning at Woolworth's," he explained. "A sixpenny rubber dagger which can hardly be called dangerous. That's Exhibit A. But Exhibit B is different."

He replaced the dagger in the box, and took out the second article. When they saw it, the breath from his audience was something like a mutter of consternation.

"Exhibit B," said Rich. "A real revolver, loaded with real bullets."

There was a silence.

Over his audience the revolver seemed to exercise a kind of evil fascination. It was a Webley.38, of dark, polished metal except for the ivory grip. Rich broke it open, plucked one of the cartridges from the cylinder, tossed the cartridge into the air, and caught it.

"Definitely not a toy," he pointed out, replacing the bullet and closing the magazine with a sharp click. "In fact, as deadly a weapon as we're likely to find. Therefore.. yes? Yes? What is it?"

He broke off, frowning at Sharpless.

The latter was going through a pantomime of extraordinary concentration. After screwing up his face and making gestures to attract Rich's attention, Sharpless was stabbing his finger in the direction of the partly open door.

Rich, as though enlightened, uttered an exclamation. He hurried over and closed the door firmly.

"She heard you!" said Sharpless in a whisper. "She couldn't have helped hearing you!"

Rich smiled.

"I sincerely hope she did," he answered with composure. "If she didn't, there is no point in this experiment."

"What?"

Rich tossed the pistol across to Sharpless, who automatically caught it.

"Examine that revolver," Rich suggested. "Or, more properly, examine the bullets."

The bullets were dummies.

Each empty brass cartridge-case had been fitted with a little rounded cylinder of wood, painted gray to represent a bullet. Sharpless took out each one in turn, and examined it carefully before he fitted it back again.

"I think I begin to see," he muttered, "what sort of dirty trick you've got in mind. This gun isn't dangerous at all. But—"

"Exactly," agreed Rich. "It is no more a deadly weapon than the dagger. But Mrs. Fane thinks it is."

Uncle Hubert Fane, whose apprehension at first sight of the revolver had now merged into relief, was taking such fast, furious puffs at his cigar that his head appeared to be enveloped in smoke.

"You follow me?" inquired Rich. "Here are two articles. One of them, the dagger, Mrs. Fane's inner mind knows to be harmless. The other, that revolver, she believes to be real. Very well. I shall put Mrs. Fane into a state of hypnosis. Then I shall order her to.. "

"To kill somebody," breathed Ann Browning.

"Exactly," said Rich.

It was now altogether dark, except for the white light of the parchment-shaded bridge lamp beside the sofa. A faint cooler breeze stirred the curtains at the windows.

"Mind!" added Rich, rubbing a hand vigorously across his bald skull, "I don't say I shall be able to manage this. I may not be able to establish the proper degree of influence. But if I do—"

"If you do?" prompted Ann.

"If I do," smiled Rich, "then I can tell you exactly what will happen. Under hypnosis, you understand, the patient has no mind or will of her own. She is a machine. A zombie. A walking corpse, under my direction. But—"

"Yes?"

"When she is ordered to pick up that revolver and shoot someone she loves, then she will balk. Even in anguish she won't be able to do it. Powerful as my influence is, it can't get past the barrier in her subconscious mind. But when I order her to take the dagger and stab someone, she will strike without the least hesitation. Because her subconscious mind knows that it's all a game."

Again there was a silence.

"Well, Captain Sharpless?" said Rich. "If I succeed in doing that, will you own yourself convinced?"

"I don't like it!" said that young man abruptly, and jumped to his feet.

"You don't like it, Captain Sharpless? But you were the one who suggested it."

"Yes, but I didn't know what you were going to do. I didn't know you were going to do this.”

"I think it's the most thrilling thing I've ever heard of," declared Ann Browning.

"Who," asked Sharpless, "who are you going to order her to kill?"

Rich looked surprised.

"Her husband, of course. Who else?"

Frank Sharpless craned his neck round. But if he expected any support from Fane, he did not get it.

From whatever cause, Arthur appeared to have changed his mind. He sat very still in an easy chair, his middle-sized, thick-set figure balanced on die edge of it, staring down at his well-polished shoes. The dead cigar was between his fingers. He moved his heels outwards, a queer gesture, and brought them together again with a click. He glanced up, his dark face impassive.

"I don't hold with this. Still… it won't hurt my wife in any way?"

"Oh, no. She may feel tired afterwards. But, if Mrs. Fane is the healthy, uncomplex person I am sure she is, it won't affect her at all."

"Will she know what's happening at the time?" "No."

"Or remember it afterwards?" "No."

'Is that so, now?" mused Arthur. He scratched the side of his nose with a fingernail of the game hand that held his cigar. He studied Rich. Again the rare.smile gleamed. "Suppose (just suppose, now!) that my wife did have it in her inmost mind to — hurt me?"