The Reader Is Warned

'Yes, that's all right.' After listening critically, he raised his head. "What of it? It's all true. I didn't leave my room. I wasn't with Pennik, and didn't speak to him. But I saw him.'

'Will you explain that, sir?' Chase relaxed.

'With pleasure. At about a quarter to eight my bath was running and I was getting out of my clothes. I heard one whacking great crash, like glass or china smashing. I opened the door of my room and looked out. I saw Pennik come out of Hilary's room, close the door behind him, and go downstairs. That's all.'

'But didn't that strike you as odd ?'

Chase frowned. He put up his head and studied Masters with a strange, broad look like a man trying to get a good view of a too large picture.

. 'No, certainly not. Why should it? Hilary had offered to help him with the dinner; or to serve it, at least. (Sanders will confirm that.) That's why I supposed he was there.'

'Is that right, Dr Sanders?'

'Quite right.'

'Hurrum! But didn't the smash of china strike you as odd, Mr Chase?' Chase hesitated.

'Yes, it did - for a second. Then I got an explanation of it; and I didn't think about Pennik afterwards.' His look grew aloof. 'No sooner had Pennik got downstairs than the door of Sam's room opened and out came poor old Sam in a rush, pulling on a dressing-gown and stumbling all over the place in his bare feet to put them right in the slippers. He went straight down to Sanders's room, and banged on the door, and opened it. I heard him ask what was going on. And I heard Sanders's voice say, "It's all right; the lamp fell over." ' .

He paused.

'Yes, sir?' prompted Masters.

Chase lifted his shoulders. 'I also heard Hilary's voice.'

'Well?'

'So I closed my door,' said Chase in an elaborately casual tone, and as though he were closing the subject. 'It was no damned business of mine. But why should I think any more about Pennik? After all, Hilary wasn't in her room.'

He did not explain further; he did not need to.

So that, Sanders reflected, was the explanation of Chase's humours over the week-end. If ever a case existed in which everybody (perhaps naturally) misunderstood everybody else's motives, it was this one. But he did not say anything, for the chief inspector's eye warned him. Masters suddenly grew bland and hearty - a sign which Chase recognized, for he unbent as well.

'I see,' observed the chief inspector. 'Quite understandable, as you might say. Quite! So we might as well clear up the point while we're on it, eh?'

Chase grinned at him. 'Ask your questions, Chief Inspector, and no soft soap. Soft soap is always a sign that there's dirty water about. Remember that I'm not apt to trip over my own legal feet.'

'Just so. - Now, when you did see Mr Pennik at that time, did you notice anything odd about him?'

'You keep on using that word "odd". What do you mean, odd?'

Masters merely made a gesture.

'No, I can't say I did. The light in the hall "was too dim for me to make out his expression, if that's what you mean. Except that he went along at a kind of waddle, like a damned great ape. But then (and I am not afraid of slander here) I already suspected he was touched in the head.'

'Touched in the head ?'

'Look here, Chief Inspector.' Chase spun the cigarette-case into the air and caught it. He seemed to come to a decision. 'I've been in some degree of hot water over this already. It's quite true: he really did ask me, in the kitchen, whether he could be charged with murder if he killed a man under the conditions he described. I said that even in the present state of the law it still wasn't a crime to sit down and think as hard thoughts about a man as you liked. He was so infernally reasonable and academic about the whole thing; you can't help rather liking the fellow. - Don't you agree, Sanders?'

‘Yes, I think I do.'

'But to take him seriously: oil'

From the Turkish corner, where H. M. sat with the corners of his broad mouth turned down, issued a chuckle of sour amusement.

'Ho, ho,' said H. M. 'So you were beginnin' to take him seriously, then, son ?'

Chase pointed the cigarette-case.

'Well, a little thought-reading is one thing,' he said, as though arguing that boys will be boys. 'But to crack a man's bones and skull with thought, like a death-ray, is coming it too strong. Think! Think what it would mean if it were true. Hitler, for instance. Hider suddenly claps his hands to his head and says, "Mein Gott!" or "Mein Kampf!" or whatever it is he's always saying, and falls over as dead as Bismarck. I argued. I said, "Well, could you kill Hitler, for instance?"'

This evoked so much interest that Masters shut up his notebook. H. M. pulled down his spectacles. 'And what'd he say to that, son?' 'He said, "Who is Hitier?" ' 'So?'

'Yes; just like that. All of a sudden it was like talking to the Man in the Moon. I asked him where he had been for the last five or six years. He said quite seriously, "In various parts of Asia, where we do not get much news." He then asked me - me to be reasonable. He said, first, that he didn't claim to succeed with everybody; and, second, that he would have to meet the victim in question and "fit a cap" on him - whatever that may mean - before he could succeed; finally, that he must have lived in conjunction with the victim, who must be of an intelligence inferior to his own.'

Chief Inspector Masters turned a satirical eye towards H.M.

'Which,' Masters pointed out, 'which, for one reason or another, 'ud seem to rule out bumping off Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin or any of the big pots. - But you didn't get all this out of saying a word or two to him on Friday night?'

'No, no, I tackled him yesterday. He... where is he-now, by the way?'

Masters was soothing.

'It's all right, sir. He won't hurt you.'

'You bet he won't; not if I can help it. But where is he?'

'I expect the gentleman's off sulking somewhere. He wanted to talk to some reporters at the police-station; but I convinced 'em he was harmless,' said Masters with rich satisfaction. 'Come, now, sir! You're not impressed by all this rubbish, are you? Then why bother about where he is now?'

'No. It was only,' said Chase, 'that I thought I saw him outside the window just now.'

Masters got up. He went over to the three full-length windows in their bay facing the front of the house, where the last light showed between curtains beaded at the edges like a Spanish hat. Setting his heavy shoulder under the frame, Masters pushed up one window with a screech; and then he ran it up smoothly.

'Bit too warm in here. I'll just take the liberty' - he indicated the liberty he had taken. Then he leaned out and sniffed the air, which stirred with a cool touch down the room.

Thin noises dropped into the hush: a flutter near the bird-bath, a crackle as though of vines contracting at nightfall. But the path outside was empty.

'Probably somewhere about. Mr Pennik likes wandering, they tell me,' Masters went on. He became brisk. 'Now, Mr Chase! There are some questions I'd like to ask you: not about Mr Pennik, but about yourself. And while I do... I wonder, Doctor, whether you'd mind going up and asking Miss Keen to join us? Eh?'

Sanders went, closing the double-doors of the drawing-room behind him.

He had not quite liked the way Masters had looked out of that window, like a marksman on a tower. But when he went upstairs and knocked at the door of Mina Constable's room, nothing could have seemed more domestic. Hilary Keen, with a certain determination, was sitting near the window, knitting; and she bent close to the window to catch the light. Mina, wrapped in a rather gaudy silk robe, sat back in a padded chair by the bed. There was an ash-tray full of cigarette-stubs beside her, and she was smoking still another cigarette: rolling it round and round in her mouth as though the lips were too smooth to hold it. Both women showed a kind of relief. The atmosphere was one of peace -but a dry and drained peace, as though they had exhausted each other's conversation, and merely waited.