John Carr - The Reader Is Warned Страница 4

impressiveness of his pointed silence, he caught sight of the open window. He looked at them again; he went over carefully, picking each step, and closed the window; he gave them a final look.

'How do you do?' he said - and devoted himself to Sanders to the pointed exclusion of everyone else.

'That's all right, my dear,' said Mina, tapping his arm with great brightness. 'Larry is going to get us some drinks (aren't you, Larry?) and then we shall all feel better. After all, Mrs Chichester has promised to get us something to eat-'

Her husband ignored her. He kept his eyes fixed on Sanders. .

'You have probably heard what happened. Well, young man, you will be lucky to get anything to eat at all. In this house, at least. A certain Mrs Chichester has at last graciously consented to preside: she can't do a proper' dinner, but she promises us a "bit of cold beef" and "a nice salad." ' At the very words, his sallow colour rose. 'Well," that's no good to me. I don't want a bit of cold beef and a nice salad. I want a decent dinner, decently cooked. And since-'

'Sam, I really am terribly sorry,' urged Mina, dragging off her hat and throwing it on a wicker settee. Her anxiety deepened as she plucked at his sleeve. 'I do know how you feel. But this is early-closing day, and except for the cold things there simply isn't anything in the house.'

Sam Constable turned to her with great courtesy, and a certain pompousness in his tubby figure. 'Is that my fault, my dear ?' „ 'Well, with the servants not getting here -' That is no concern of mine. It's hardly my business to go about with a basket buying meat and whatever it is. Do try to be sensible, Mina. If you can make the minutest preparations to drag me through eight hundred miles of malarial swamp (and you should see your own eyes now, my dear), then surely it is not too much to hope for provisions in our own house. However, we must not quarrel before our guests.'

'I will get you a meal, if you like,' offered Herman Pennik.

It was so unexpected that they all turned to stare at him. Chase, who had started out to get die drinks, stuck his head back round the corner of a clump of ferns to get a better look.

And Sam Constable was surprised enough to speak to him.

'You are a cook; my friend?' he inquired, in the faintly contemptuous tone of one who says,' I might have known it.' "That is, in addition to your other accomplishments?'

'I am a very good cook. I cannot do you a hot dinner, of course, but I can prepare dishes that will make you glad it is a cold one.'

Hilary Keen laughed. It was a spontaneous laugh, a release from strain. She got up from the rim of the fountain.

'Oh, good! Well done! - Please sit down, Mrs Constable, and be comfortable,' she urged. 'Honestly, don't you think too much tragedy is being made over the quesdon of getting a meal? If you were as poor as I am you wouldn't feel like that. Mr Pennik shall get the dinner, I will serve it -'

'No, no, no,' said Pennik, shocked. 'You serve it? No, I could not allow that. Just leave it all to me.'

'You have made a conquest, Miss Keen,' said Sam Constable.

He spoke with, ponderous gallantry. Whether he was tickled by the idea of Pennik as cook, or whether Hilary's words flattered him by implying fastidious tastes on his ' part, Sanders could not be sure; but Sam was suddenly in a gay good-humour. Mina - who had been looking round hopefully, as though to assure herself .that everybody thought her husband a devil of a fine fellow in spite of his little lapses - became dreamy again.

"Then that's settled,' she declared. "Didn't Dumas cook a dinner for the gourmets of France? I wish I could. I think there's even a chef's cap in the kitchen somewhere: you know, one of those tall white things with the muffin tops. You can have that, Mr Pennik.'

'It will become him,' said Sam gravely. 'But you must give us your word not to poison us. Eh ?'

It was Chase who intervened, swinging out a wicker table with a rasp of legs on the tiled floor which made Sam jump and his brow darken again. On this table Chase put down a tray full of bottles, glasses, and a bowl of cracked ice.

'Oh, he won't poison us,' Chase assured them. 'He won't do that, whatever happens. He wouldn't need to.' 'Wouldn't need to?'

'No. He would simply think about us, and - boppo! Gin-and-It, or shall I mix a cocktail?'

'Just what in blazes are you talking about?'

'True as gospel,' said Chase, pouring out drinks rapidly. 'Vote? No cocktail? Right. What about you, Mina? Didn't you want a cocktail ?'

'Anything at all for me, please, Larry. Gin-and-It will be splendid.'

'Mr Pennik,' pursued Chase, 'says that thought-waves are a physical force. Of course we knew that; but now he says that, properly used, they could kill a man.'

Over Sam Constable's face, as he accepted a glass, came a despairing expression. It was as though he said: 'Something. Always something to pester and torment me. Why have all the nuisances got to be piled on me?' Pure pettishness and self-pity boiled up coldly under the surface.

'Indeed?' he said, swallowing noisily in the glass. 'Then you have been playing thought-reading games again?'

'Well, ask Sanders here! Just ask him. Mr Pennik told him to think of something, and got it first shot. He even got it when Sanders tried to hide what he was thinking, including -'

'Other things,' interposed Hilary, with her eyes on the fountain. N

'I wonder if I have got the right man for my money?' said Sam, looking at Sanders over the rim of his glass. 'Young man, you are a medical man?'

'I am.'

'And a consultant to the Home Office pathologist, they tell me?' ‘

Yes.'

'And you hold with all this rubbish ?'

'I don't necessarily hold with anything, Mr Constable. I am willing to admit that Mr Pennik gave a remarkable demonstration, which is a fair description of it.'

Their host jumped to his feet.

'Mina, for God's sake! Will you stop twitching and jittering with that glass, like an old hag soaking up gin in a pub ? If your hands are too shaky to hold the glass properly, put it on the table and drink over the rim. That at least would be more decent than the spectacle you are making of yourself now.'

He stopped, and had himself the decency to look a little ashamed after his outburst. Probably he meant nothing. But there was a cruel scratch in it, for the trembling hands of a malaria aftermath are obvious enough by themselves.

Mina said nothing.

'All right, all right, I'm sorry,' he grumbled. He drained the glass; took another pull at it when it was empty; and sat down again. 'But you people make a fellow feel old. Have a little pity sometimes. I often say Mina will be the death of me yet, dropping things. Nerves. Can't stand it. All the same, what I say is that this thought-reading business is rubbish. It's wrong. It's' - the veins swelled in his forehead - 'it's against everything we've ever been taught. It's against nature, that's all.'

'You will work yourself up so, Sam,' complained Mina. Her eyes shone. 'Don't you see how fascinating it is? And you know perfectly well Mr Pennik told you what you were thinking about when you tested him. Only you would interrupt and shout, "Wrong!" before the words were even out of his mouth. And then afterwards you wouldn't test him at all. I'm sorry, my dear, but you know it's true.'

Her husband looked at her.

'Shall we change the subject?' he suggested, with powerful courtesy. He took out his watch and studied it elaborately. 'Ah, good, good! Nearly seven-thirty. Good time to bathe and dress before dinner -'

"But, Sam, surely we're not dressing for dinner to-night?'

He looked at her again.

'Of course we are dressing for dinner, my dear. Do you see any material reason for altering our custom? If I can dress for dinner among a lot of damned niggers, surely I can dress for dinner in my own house?'

'Of course, if you like.'

'I do like, thank you. Parker would have to choose this night to be in hospital; only man I ever had who knew how to lay out my things properly. But there it is. That's the way things go. You will have to deputize for him, my dear, if you feel equal to the task. Er -' Tilting up his chin, he looked at Herman Pennik. 'I must thank you, my friend, for your offer to get dinner for us. Shall we say, then, that you can have it ready as soon past eight o'clock as possible?'

'If you like,' said Pennik. He reflected. 'But I do not think, Mr Constable, that you will get any dinner.'

The other sat up. 'Not get my dinner? Why the devil shouldn't I get my dinner?'

'Because I do not think you will be alive then,' said Pennik.

It was perhaps ten seconds before the meaning of the words penetrated into the listeners' minds; before sense could be made put of sound. And it was longer than that before anyone spoke.

All through the previous conversation, through each word and jar and gesture, Pennik had been sitting so quietly that they were not even aware of him. Nor had they spoken to him. Now they were aware of him as an entity, perhaps a huge entity. He was sitting forward in his chair, wearing respectable blue serge, his feet crossed, his knees out at an angle, and his hands clasped together so tightly that bluish half-moons showed at the base of the nails. Each small sound was magnified in the bright conservatory: the murmur of the fountain growing to a splash, the scrape of a shoe on tile.

And the conservatory seemed much too cold for such a hot room.

Sam Constable broke the silence with hollow incredulity, like a child; the room came to life again. 'What are you talking about?'

'I said that I did hot think you would be alive by the time dinner is served.' Lawrence Chase sprang to his feet. 'A seizure?' demanded their host, with sudden alarm. 'No.'

'Then will you have the goodness to explain what you mean, my friend? Trying to frighten -' Sam Constable checked himself, peered round suspiciously, and held up his glass. 'I hardly suppose you can mean that somebody has poisoned my drink?' he added with elaborate sarcasm.

'No, I do not mean that.'

'I'll tell you what he means,' said Hilary quietly. 'Mr Pennik, can you tell, or think you can tell, what each one of us is thinking about ?'

'Perhaps.'

'And it's in someone's mind to kill Mr Constable within a very short time?' ‘Perhaps.'

There was another silence.

'Of course,' Pennik emphasized, gripping his hands together more tightly and nodding at each word as though to define his terms. 'I do not say it is certain to happen. I - well, there are reasons. I will lay a place for you at the table, Mr Constable. But you may not occupy it.' He raised his eyes. 'Since you set so much store by the quality you call sportsmanship, there is your warning.'

'Oh, rot!' burst out Chase. 'Look here -'

After an uncertain muttering, Sam glanced up. Then, surprisingly, his jaw came out and over his face crept an expression of fighting humour for which Sanders was compelled to admire him.

'Ah, well,' said their host. 'I thank you for the warning, sir. I shall keep an eye out. But who is going to murder me?

My wife ? And make it look like an accident, like that case in the paper? Be careful, Mina. Remember, after you have killed me, that you talk in your sleep. That will at least keep you virtuous during your widowhood.' His elbow knocked over a glass, which broke with a crash on the tiled floor. 'Lord, what utter blathering drivelling bilge! I'm going upstairs to dress. Coming, everybody?'

'Sam, he means it,' said Mina.

'Are you sure you are quite yourself, my dear?'

'Sam, I tell you he means it!'

'I found somebody's suitcase standing outside the front door,' said their host briskly. 'Yours, Dr Sanders? Good. It is in the front hall. If you will come with me, I will show you your room. Mina, take Miss Keen to hers. Larry, perhaps you will be good enough to show Mr Pennik where the kitchen is, and the - er - rest of it, you know. Brr, but it's cold I'

'Yes,' said Pennik, gravely. 'I should like a word with Mr Chase.'

'Sam -' Mina almost screamed.

He closed his fingers firmly round her arm and led her out. The last glimpse Sanders had was of Pennik and Chase standing amid a tamed jungle by the wicker table; and Pennik had just said something which made Chase start and look round. Their shuffling footsteps sounded hollow under the glass dome. And a clock struck seven-thirty.

CHAPTER IV

It was at a quarter to eight that Sanders heard the faint cry from the next room.

Looking down from a window at Fourways, he had already decided, was like looking down over the side of a ship. You went through a series of padded lounges, into a main hall paved with tiny white unglazed tiles. You went up a main staircase built against a wall which consisted chiefly of tall stained-glass windows ascending like the treads of the stairs. All lights were in cut-glass shades or in snaky bronze holders or in both. On the first floor up - there were four floors altogether - the six principal bedrooms opened out on a landing round three sides of a square.

It was a small landing, heavily carpeted and badly lighted, with a grandfather clock. Two bedrooms occupied each of three sides of a square, with the staircase-wall forming the fourth side. Sanders was given the room next to Hilary Keen. Sam and Mina Constable occupied the two rooms facing the staircase-wall. Chase and Pennik, he supposed, would be in the remaining two on the third side.

At the moment, what Sanders wanted was time to think. His bedroom fulfilled all predictions. The windows were heavily curtained in many overlays like old-fashioned petticoats; there was a big brass bed; and on a table by one window stood an (unused) china lamp. But, though not centrally heated, Fourways was well supplied with bathrooms, and Sanders had a private one.

To get this stifling atmosphere out of his brain, he turned off the heater and opened both windows. There seemed no way of fastening the curtains back, and-he left them. Outside one window was one of those tiny and useless window-balconies cramped against the high pitch of the wall. After breathing deeply, he took a quick cold bath and dressed in some haste. Ready except for his coat and waistcoat, he lighted a cigarette and gave himself time to think.

Now, in spite of that demonstration of thought-reading, was Herman Pennik really-?

Wait!

He could have sworn he heard a faint cry. He could also have sworn it came from the next room, though the walls were thick and it was difficult to trace the source of sounds. He waited, trying to follow what sounded like a mumbling or a creaking of windows. Then several things happened at once.

The heavy rep curtains belled out on the farther of the open windows. Someone seemed to be fighting them. The tiny table tilted up beside them; bumping, the china lamp slid on that smooth surface, whirled, and went to the floor with a crash that must have been audible downstairs. From under the curtains appeared first a black satin slipper; then flesh-coloured stockings; then an arm and a dark blue gown; and then Hilary Keen, breathing hard, tumbled into the room. She was so frightened that the colour seemed to have been drained from her eyes, and she was as near a faint as she had ever been in her life.