Bodies from the Library 2

Broken at last by a different voice, the voice of the medium. Strangely quiet after the hubble-bubble of that terrible voice. Spelling out—letters. An F. A pause and then an O; and then without interval, C-A-N-E. His name, he had said: and his name was F. O. Cane.

Into the stillness, Delphine said quietly: ‘Rearrange the letters and it spells—No Face.’

He got rid of them all, rushed to the telephone. The wooden voice tinged with exasperation. ‘ Yes , Mr Hawke?’

‘His name,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I can tell you his name. And it is not my name.’

‘Oh, that. I never very seriously thought it was.’

His mind shook. To have offered this precious secret on a plate, which all the time might have been saved for some world-shattering revelation when the time was ripe!—and to find that after all, he needed no such proof of his innocence. But he had blurted it out already. ‘His name is F. O. Cane.’

A moment’s silence, and then: ‘You’ve been playing at anagrams, Mr Hawke, you and that pretty young lady of yours. F. O. Cane—No Face. But why not A. F. Cone? or C. O. Fane? Or F. Ocean, that would be rather a jolly name, F. Ocean. The Red Sea, perhaps, considering his fondness for blood?’

The narrow, hatchet face grew pinched with fury, he clung to the receiver with a juddering hand. ‘All right! You’ll be sorry! I’ll tell you nothing more, let him kill and kill and kill, you’ll get no more help from me!’ And to reclaim something at least from disaster, he broadcast widely that during a mediumistic trance, the murderer himself had come through and revealed his name. It would be safest not yet to make this public but he would deposit it in a sealed envelope, and one day the world would know that he had been right.

And indeed that night, the voice called the police—they had arranged code words with him to save themselves from hoaxers—and his name was F. O. Cane.

Delphine was uncertain about it, uneasy. ‘He’ll know that you know—and that probably I do too. Tonight; he may know tonight, if they get it on the nine o’clock news.’ She looked very pale and drawn. ‘I feel a bit scared going home. I suppose, just for once—?’

But he was tired, exhausted. ‘You’ll be all right, he doesn’t know yet, get back and lock yourself in, you’ll be perfectly safe.’ After all, what else was there to do about it? Give her shelter here? But he simply could not risk scandal now. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m totally worn out by the séance. And then that fool of a policeman—’ At the thought of it his voice began to rise, he felt sick with it, physically sick with the rage and the despair. ‘Real—this time it was real. But they’ll never believe …’ And the darkness descending, and the blackness …

But at four o’clock in the morning, he was wide awake and dialling her number. ‘Delphine—he’s rung me up!’

‘Oh, Mr Hawke—!’

‘About you! He says he’s going to … He says—tonight!’

She gave a sort of scream, broke into terrified sobbing. ‘His voice came through again, Delphine. It was real, it was genuine, believe me! I came to and found myself by the telephone. Now, look—lock yourself in, bar the door, put something against it.’

‘Oh, God,’ she sobbed, ‘I’m so frightened! He—he stabs them and stabs them. I can’t stay here, I can’t be alone—’

‘Don’t go, don’t leave your flat, I’ll call the police—’

‘Please come,’ she cried, imploring. ‘Please come, please come!’

‘Yes, but I can’t remember—Delphine! Your address?’ But her voice said, ‘I’m going to … Passing out …’ and there was the clatter of the dropped receiver. He called her name urgently, but there was no reply.

When he got through to the police station, it was from a call-box. A night-duty officer this time. Cagily. ‘He rang you? Any code word?’

‘Code? I don’t know. I was in trance—’

‘Oh, in trance, sir, were you?’

‘Some word did keep coming through. Silver?—could it be—?’ All caginess vanished. The voice snapped: ‘Name and address?’

Her name, yes. ‘But I can’t remember—’

‘Telephone?’

‘You can try but she seems to have fainted. And it’s a rented flat, the ’phone’s not in her name.’ And time passing, time passing. ‘Anyway, you find it, I can’t wait—I’ll have to try and remember the way. He could be there at this minute.’

He allowed himself only the smallest delay but it was almost an hour before he appeared at her flat. The police were there, the Superintendent himself. He gasped out: ‘Delphine?’

Superintendent Tomm in his level way. ‘The young lady’s not here.’

‘Oh, God, he hasn’t—?’

‘He’s been here. The window was forced, he’d got in over the roofs.’

‘But Delphine?’

‘She heard him at the window. Tore open the door and escaped. There’s a call-box just outside the flats, she rang us from there. We’ve got her safe. But meanwhile, of course, he’d been here and gone.’ He remarked coolly: ‘ You took your time.’

‘There’s thick fog—’

‘We noticed. Still—an hour! You started out from home?’

‘Well, of course.’

‘I ask, because you rang the station from a call-box.’

‘She didn’t replace her receiver. That disconnected my ’phone. I got lost, I’ve been driving round and round, hardly knowing what I was doing.’

‘Yes, well … We’ll keep the girl for the night, she’s in a pretty bad way …’

She had pulled herself together by the time she came to him next morning, but she still looked terrible, pale as death and with dark arcs beneath her eyes. He was sitting collapsed in his chair and did not even look up at her. She knelt at his side. ‘Don’t be so upset! I’m all right now. I got away safe.’

He said dully: ‘Before I started, I rang round the media. I told them there’d be another killing. Last night, I said. A girl. In her own home. It’s been broadcast everywhere. And now I shall be proved wrong.’

She got to her feet, stood staring down at him. ‘Oh, my God—Mr Hawke! You’d rather I had been killed. Killed, murdered, slaughtered—if it would keep them believing in your powers!’

‘Oh, no!’ he cried out. ‘No, no!’ And he fell on his knees, caught at her hand, holding it against his worn face, clammy and cold. ‘Of course I wouldn’t sacrifice one hair of your head, Delphine!’ And yet … ‘It means so much to me. I have the gift, you know that: it’s so terrible to me that nobody will believe. Last night—the ’phone call: that was a genuine experience, I swear to you that it was. And now, if I’m proved wrong—’

She slid away her hand, stepped back, looking down at him. The horror seemed to fade away from her face, pity took its place. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You’re safe. He did kill again last night.’

Now it was Superintendent Tomm’s turn to call on Joseph Hawke. ‘This time you weren’t quite so bang on. A girl was killed, yes. In her home, yes. But a man was killed too, the boy friend, visiting. You didn’t foresee that?’

‘Well, but …’ He said quickly: ‘That would be fortuitous. He meant to kill a girl—well, he meant to kill Delphine. But the man appeared, he had to kill him too.’

‘You’re still offering this as a psychic revelation?’ said the Superintendent, curiously.

‘I was in trance. I have these—well, what you would call dreams, very troubled, I wake up exhausted as though—’

‘As though you’d been walking in your sleep, perhaps?’

‘In this case as though I’d had the telephone call. A psychic revelation: yes, just the right phrase. How else could I have known the code word?’