Distantly, a church clock in the town struck the half hour after ten.
In the front garden of Arthur Fane's house, a warm-looking and misty moon penetrated the elms to illumine two figures who were standing on the lawn, glancing up at intervals towards the left-hand bedroom windows. These windows were closed and their curtains drawn, since in tetanus cases no breath of wind must touch the victim lest it bring on convulsions.
Outside in the street stood Dr. Nithsdale's car, and the hospital car which had brought the antitoxic serum.
Ann Browning and Phil Courtney, together on the lawn, spoke in whispers.
"But is there any chance?" Ann muttered. "That's what I want to know. Is there any chance?"
"I can't tell you. I seem to remember reading that if the symptoms come on very quickly, you're a goner."
She put her hand, a warm soft hand, on his arm. She tightened her fingers, and shook the arm fiercely. He had never felt closer to her than in this darkness, where her face looked pallid, her lips dark, and her eyes larger.
"But a little pin?" she insisted. "A little thing like a pin, to do all that?"
i "It can and has. And it was pressed in to the head, remember."
She shuddered. "Thank heaven I didn't use it; Poor Vicky!"
He pressed the hand on his arm. "I didn't even notice," she said, "that the pin was— rusty."
"It wasn't rusty." He recalled the picture. "I remember how it shone when the light touched it. But then this germ's in the air, in dust; it comes from dust. From anything."
Again she shuddered. A light sprang up in the long windows of the front bedroom across the hall from Vicky's. A long shadow, that of Hubert Fane, crossed and recrossed the windows, beating its hands together. From the house they heard no noise or voice.
"Look here," Courtney said sharply. "You're worrying yourself to death. You can't do any good out here, just watching a closed window. Go in and sit down. H.M. will tell us when there's any news."
"You-you think I'd better?"
"Definitely."
"The trouble is," she burst out, "that Vicky's such a decent person. Always trying to do the right thing, always putting herself out for someone else. It just seems as though there's been nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble for her ever since two nights ago, when we first saw…"
The front gate clicked.
Dr. Richard Rich, in a somewhat theatrical-looking soft black hat and a dark blue suit, closed the gate behind him and came hesitantly up the path.
"Miss Browning, isn't it?" he inquired, peering in the gloom. "And Mr.-?"
"Courtney."
"Ah, yes! Courtney. Sir Henry's secretary." Rich rubbed his cheek. "I hope you'll excuse this intrusion. I came to see whether there were any developments."
"Developments!" breathed Ann.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Dr. Rich," said Ann with cruel clearness, "I don't know how many people you've killed, through carelessness, in the course of your professional career. But you killed Vicky Fane last night. She's dying, do you hear? Dying."
Rich appeared to be staring back at them through the distorting moonlight.
"What in the name of sanity are you talking about?"
"Steady, Ann!" said Courtney. He put his arm round her shoulders tightly. All her body seemed to droop. "Doctor, do you remember showing Mrs. Fane was really hypnotized by driving a pin into her arm?"
"Yes? Well?"
"Tetanus. The doctors are upstairs with her now."
There was a pause, while they heard him draw in his breath. Then Rich's bass voice hit back like a blow of commonsense directness, with fear behind it.
"That's impossible!"
"Don't take my word for it. Go in and see."
"I tell you it's impossible! The pin was perfectly clean. Besides—"
Rich pulled the brim of his hat still further down. After a pause, during which his mouth seemed to be working, he turned round and started for die house. They followed him. The front door was on the latch, and a light burned in the hall. Rich's mottled pallor was still further revealed as he removed his hat.
"May I go upstairs?"
"I doubt if they'd let you in. The doctors are there, and a man from Scotland Yard."
Rich hesitated. There was a light in the library, at the front and to their left. Motioning to the others to precede him, Rich went in and closed the door.
This library, you felt, was seldom used. It had a correct air of weightiness: a claw-footed desk, a globe-map, and an overmantel of heavy carved wood. The books, clearly bought by the yard and unread, occupied two walls: in their contrasts of brown, red, blue, and black leather or cloth among the sets, even in an occasional artistic gap along the shelves, they showed the hand of the decorator. A bronze lamp burned on the desk.
"Now," Rich said through his teeth. "Please tell me the symptoms."
Courtney told him.
"And these symptoms came on when?"
"Just before tea-time, I understand."
"God in heaven!" muttered Rich, as though unable to believe his ears. He massaged his forehead, and then hastily consulted his watch. "Sixteen hours! Only sixteen hours! I can't believe it would have got as bad as that in only…"
His voice grew bewildered, almost piteous.
"I forget," he added. "I have not practiced medicine for eight years. Your knowledge grows scrambled. You…" His eyes wandered round the bookshelves. "I don't suppose they'd have any medical works here? Stop. There's a Britannica, at least. It might help to jog my memory."
The set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, fourteenth edition, was on a rather high shelf. Rich stood on tiptoe and plucked down the twenty-first volume, "SORD to TEXT." He carried it to the desk under the lamp. His hands shook. But it was unnecessary for him to leaf through in order to find the article on tetanus.
An envelope, used as a book-mark, was already in the volume at the page containing the tetanus article.
"Somebody's been looking it up already," he observed, flattening out the book.
"Nothing in that," said Ann. "Maybe someone wanted to know — how bad it was. It's convulsions, isn't it?"
"In the final stages, yes. Excuse me." "And you did it," said Ann.
"Young woman," said Rich, raising a quietly haggard face as his finger followed the words of the text, "I have had much trouble in my life. I don't deserve this."
The door opened, and Sir Henry Merrivale lumbered in.
H.M., still wearing his white flannels and shirt, had his big fists on his hips. His manner had grown even more uneasy. Ann and Courtney regarded him questioningly.
"No better," he growled. "If anything, a little worse. And goin' on," His scowl deepened. "Y'know," he seemed to be speaking to himself rather than to the others, "I'm glad I didn't have the responsibility for diagnosin'. Every symptom exact; rusty pin on dressing table… Oh, Lord love a duck, what's wrong?"
"Sir Henry!" said Rich sharply.
H.M. woke up.
"Hullo. You here, son?"
"In time—" Rich closed up the book with a bang— "to hear that I'm supposed to be in trouble again. But I tell you frankly, I don't propose to be — what is the word? — framed for the second time. I don't believe it! Fourteen hours! No, sixteen hours; but it's the same. Those symptoms came on too quickly."
"I know, son," agreed H.M., expelling his breath. "That's what worries me too."
Rich's eyes narrowed.
"I wasn't aware you were a medical man, sir." "Uh-huh. Yes. In a small way.' "What have they done?" "Tetanus antitoxin…" "How much?"
"A thousand units. Injected intrathecally by lumbar puncture. Morphia for the pain. Quiet and dark. What else can they do? And yet, d'ye know—!"
H.M. wandered across the room. He lowered his big bulk of fifteen stone into a carved chair, where he sat glowering.
"When you get to thinkin' about it," he went on, "you can see the symptoms, the real bad symptoms, came on too quick. Unless, of course—" he spoke slowly—"that pin had been dipped into tetanus bacilli to begin with."
The library was so quiet that they could all hear the creaking footsteps which tiptoed in Vicky Fane's bedroom just overhead. It was a physical quality of stillness; it took listeners by the throat. Rich took a step away from the desk. Rich struck his right hand on the globe-map, setting the globe spinning like their wits.
"Are you suggesting," he said, "deliberate murder?"
"I dunno, son. Hardly seems probable, does it? But that'd seem the only explanation. Unless—"
H.M. stopped abruptly. His expression grew fixed and far away, his hand poised in die air. An incredulous look began to dawn behind the big spectacles. He snapped his fingers.
"Excuse me," he muttered hastily, and hauled himself up from the chair. "I got to go."
He was out of the room, and the door had closed behind him, before anyone could speak. They heard his footsteps in the hall.
"Tetanus baccilli," murmured Ann. Her own look was startled, incredulous, and frightened. "But that couldn't be!" She appealed to Rich. "Could it?"
"Don't ask me. I refrain, Miss Browning, from pointing out—" About to say something eke, Rich paused. "There's a trap here," he added.
"Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"If Vicky's going to die, when will she die?"
"How can I tell? Death from tetanus rarely takes place within twenty-hours after the onset.
Ann looked at the closed door.
"Twenty-four hours," she repeated. "Five o'clock in the morning. Dawn. Breakfast-time, maybe. Oh, it's horrible!"
Rich said nothing more. Without a glance at them he quietly left the library.
The minutes dragged on. With an instinct of neatness, Ann replaced the volume of the encyclopedia on its shelf.
"I think I'll go home," she decided in a colorless voice. "There's nothing I can do here, and I've got to be up early tomorrow morning. Will you — will you walk part of the way with me?"
"I'll walk all the way with you."
"I go out the back. It's only in Drayton Road, near here.-You go up Elm Lane, behind the house, and turn into Old Bath Road."
With no foreboding of what was to come within the next half-hour, Courtney opened the door for her. They tiptoed across the hardwood floor of the hall to the dining room. Some sort of subdued argument now seemed to be going on in the hall upstairs. Two words, "continuous contraction," emerged in H.M.'s voice, followed by the fierce shushing tones of Dr. Nithsdale.
The dining room was dark, but the white-tiled kitchen beyond was lighted. A clock ticked with homely effect on a shelf over the refrigerator. Daisy Fenton, her eyes red with weeping, sat rigidly on a kitchen chair and occasionally wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron.
By the sink stood a stout gray-haired woman whom Courtney supposed to be Mrs. Propper, the cook. Though she held herself like a grenadier, her own eyebalk had a strained look which indicated emotion not far off.
A swing door (which, unexpectedly, did not creak at all) admitted Ann and Courtney to this warm domestic interior.
"Good evening, Mrs. Proppe'r," Ann said politely. "Evening, Miss Ann." "You're up late."
"First time I've been out of me bed after nine o'clock," declared Mrs. Propper, balancing herself with one hand on the drain-board, "since that grand dinner-party when they wanted the bomb-a-la-rain for a sweet. (Oh, Daisy, do stop sniveling; there's a good girl!) Miss Ann, who's that wild man?"
"What wild man?"
"That man with the bald head."
"You mean Dr. Rich?"
"Oh, him? Not that hypnotist fellow. I know him. He came walking through here only a few minutes ago, and out the back door to the garden, without so much as by-your-leave. No, I mean the other man. Big stout man in his shirt-sleeves, if you please, who came in before the hypnotist, and started asking all the questions."
"You mean Sir Henry Merrivale?"
Mrs. Propper was taken aback.
"Lord! Got a title, has he?" Visibly, H.M.'s stock shot up in her estimation. "Now whoever would 'a' thought it? No offense meant, I'm sure. But he did carry on like as if he wasn't right in the head. And then there's that Captain Sharpless. I say it's a disgrace!"
"Auntie!" cried Daisy. "Auntie!"
"I say it's a disgrace," affirmed Mrs. Propper, whacking her hand down on the drain-board. "And I'm sure Miss Ann agrees with me. Him coming here the day after, with Mr. Fane not cold in his coffin. And going up to Mrs. Fane's bedroom: ber bedroom, if you please: at four o'clock in the afternoon. He's out in the garden now, and I say it's a disgrace."
"Really, Mrs. Propper—!" said Ann.
But, since she refused to show grief at death or illness, Mrs. Propper took it out in another way. The tears did start to her eyes with the strength of her opinions here.
"Mind you, Miss Ann, I'll not say Mr. Fane was all I like a gentleman to be. He did look at my household accounts as though he thought I might cheat him, and tick off every little thing with a pencil. I like a gentleman to be free with his money, or else why is he a gentleman?"
"Mrs. Propper, please!"
"But speak no ill of the dead: that's what I've always been taught, and what I always say. There's Mr. Hubert now. Not that he's free with his money, but at least it's always a good word and a, 'Surely that's a lot of trouble for you, Mrs. Propper?' You don't mind it," continued the cook, with her jaws working and the tears now running down her face, "if you're appreciated in this world. But speak no ill of the dead; and, after all, he was her lawfully wedded husband—"
This was having its effect on Ann.
Courtney, powerfully embarrassed, was afraid that this might end in an orgy with all three of them weeping. And another idea had come to him as well.
"Mrs. Propper!" he snapped, in so sharp and peremptory a tone that she instinctively straightened up.
"Yes, sir?"
"You said that Sir Henry Merrivale was here asking you some questions?" "Yes, he was." "Questions about what?" He roused a new grievance.
"About what food Mrs. Fane had eaten today, that's what." "Oh?"
"Yes, it is. When Daisy here can tell you that not a mouthful of food has passed her lips today, not a mouthful, except the grapefruit that Captain Sharpless took up to her at four o'clock in the afternoon. That's all she'll ever touch when she feels poorly (as you very well know, Miss Ann), 'and a thousand times I've told her that it's no food to keep body and soul together." "Yes, of course, Mrs. Propper, but—" "And anyway, when the poor lady's dying, in convulsions they say, then what I say is, what difference does it make what she did or didn't eat? That's what I say."