“I loathe the damned place!”
“All the same, you must go. I’m certain the murderer will be found there.”
“Why are you certain?”
“It’s a hunch. But I take hunches very seriously ever since the one I ignored which came on my wedding morning and which said: ‘Run, Mervyn, run.’ Besides, if I were the murderer—and, incidentally, several people think I am, which somehow makes me feel much more definite—I should haunt that club. No one would expect me to do that—and I’d hear everything. You must go there. You’re a real psychic. I don’t mean, of course, that you’d look for the murderer. That would be quite useless, because there are always a dozen people in the Mirage, every one of whom has obviously committed at least one murder. The point is that if I can feel something odd in the place, you will find the murderer.”
After a silence, I asked:
“How do you know that I’m not the murderer?”
“I don’t. To be frank, at one time I half-thought you were.”
“At which time?”
“The first week after Carol’s death. I ran into you outside the Café Royal—we went to the club, and I read you the paper report of the murder—and you did not even say that you knew Carol. I telephoned you very late that night, and you still did not say that you knew Carol. So I really did wonder if you had killed her, especially as you looked so ghastly. Then I decided that you hadn’t killed her, but you knew who had. All this, of course, was before I came here to live.”
“And what do you think now?”
“Oh, my dear fellow, now I simply haven’t a guess! We’ve been living together for some weeks and the better you get to know any one, the more mysterious that person becomes. It’s only people you scarcely know who seem clear-cut and definite. If you live with a person, that person becomes more and more incomprehensible and more and more mysterious. That fact should make marriage an astounding adventure, but it seldom seems to work out that way.”
Almost immediately he went on:
“Anyhow, you must go to the Mirage Club. By the way, who do you think I met there last night? Last person you’d expect to find in a basement. Nicholas Nitouche. You know, the Foreign Office bloke. He said there was a bit of a fog and he went down some steps, in search of the Underground—and emerged in the underworld. We had quite a talk. He stressed that he did not want to be an alarmist, but there was no doubt that peace would explode soon—and that then everything would be like all hell on holiday.”
Pause.
“However, that’s not what I meant to tell you. Who do you think I met to-day?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Ferdy Fauchon. Incidentally, he has found somewhere to live. Influence, of course! He knows the nine Ministers dealing with Housing—knows ’em intimately. So he’s found a home at last. He’s living in a converted static water-tank. Says it’s not bad. Bit overlooked. Anyhow, as you know, he is an extremely vulgar fellow. I told him we were living together and he said we were well matched, because you had done everything except fall in love; and that I had done everything—except get in the family way.”
“What did you say to that?”
“I told him he was quite wrong. I said you’d been in love with your work from the cradle—and that I was perpetually pregnant.”
Part IV
FOUR DAYS
Chapter One
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
Soon after my all-night session with Mervyn, an event occurred which is frozen in my memory.
As a result of Mervyn’s insistence, I agreed to visit the Mirage Club on the condition that I went alone. It was certain that, if he came with me, I should meet all kinds of people who would cross-examine me about Carol, whereas, if I were alone, it would be unlikely that I should run into any one I knew.
On my third visit, however, just before I left, a man whom I had not seen for years, called Stacey Mortimer, suddenly appeared in the doorway and exclaimed:
“Max Arnold! Good God, my dear fellow, what on earth are you doing here?”
As Mortimer shouted the question, my name was heard by several people clustered near the entrance. I escaped as soon as I could, then, having decided never to go to the club again, I forgot the incident until an event occurred, directly derived from it. . . .
It was nearly midnight. Ten minutes earlier, Mervyn had telephoned to say that he was staying with a friend for a couple of nights. For some moments I had been looking at the very miscellaneous pile of books on the table near his sofa-bed, when the front-door bell rang.
Imagining that the visitor would be one of Mervyn’s countless acquaintances, or a “displaced person” to whom he had once given a night’s lodging, I went into the hall and opened the door—to find myself confronted by a malevolent individual of about forty-five.
“Max Arnold?”
“That is my name.”
“Good! All alone?”
“Yes.”
“Better still.”
He came into the hall, then stopped and looked round. There was something automatic about his movements, and something insolent in his attitude. He wore a soiled brown hat, pulled down over the eyes, and a stained mackintosh, only one button of which was fastened. His shoes had not been cleaned for a considerable time and the rumpled spotted suit hung loosely on his emaciated figure. One way and another, therefore, he looked a down-and-out, but a closer scrutiny revealed that everything he wore had originally been of first-class quality, consequently his grimy appearance was wholly the result of neglect.
Without glancing at me, he pointed to the door of the sitting-room.
“In there?”
I did not reply immediately, so he repeated in a tone of extreme irritability:
“In there?”
Although I loathed this man as I had never loathed any one, I felt that it was essential to placate him.
As I followed him down the hall, something about his walk convinced me that he was physically exhausted.
He stopped directly he entered the sitting-room, looked round for some moments, then exclaimed:
“Don’t tell me this junk’s yours!”
“I took this flat furnished for duration.”
“Thought so.”
For the first time, he looked at me—obliquely, but with remarkable concentration. He had short sandy hair, deep-sunk eyes, puffy features, and thin lips twisted into a perpetual half-sneer.
“No. This isn’t your set-up, Mr. Max Arnold.”
“You seem to know a good deal about me.”
“In one way, I know nothing. In another, I know—everything.”
“Really? Perhaps you’ll tell me your name—and what you want.”
“My name? Oh, yes! Hilary Harcourt. Distinguished, eh? What do I want? A talk with you—a long one. And now, I suppose. I’ll have to tell you now I found out where you live. You’re sure to ask, but it’s a fearful bore.”
He stamped with irritation, then went on:
“For years, I’ve wanted to meet the man who painted Enigma. But I’ve been away—a long way away—for a long time. I only came to London a few weeks ago. I looked up your name in the telephone book, but it isn’t there. The other night, at the Mirage Club, I heard a man shout ‘Max Arnold!’ Later, I learned that you lived with Mervyn Maitland—and everyone in London knows where that lunatic lives.”
“Do you know Maitland?”
“ ’Course not! But I’ve heard him talk at that club. It’s—revealing—that you live with a lunatic, and pay for the privilege.”