John Carr - The Sleeping Sphinx

A physical chill, like the damp breath out of that tomb, seemed to touch their hearts again.

"Did he?" asked Inspector Crawford. "He won't fight any more duels: that’ s certain. And that’ s what I mean. What am I doing here? Why did the super want me to come here? There's no—"

Suddenly Crawford stopped, drawing in his breath. His whole voice and manner changed. "Look there, sir!"

"What is it?" Dr. Fell spoke sharply.

"I didn't see it before, because I was concentrating on the floor. But look over there! In that left-hand niche in the wall!"

Lying in the niche, dusty and dirty but sending back gleams under the Inspector's torch, was a small brown bottle. It was rounded in shape; it would contain about two ounces. They could just see the edge of a label inscribed in colors. And it was still corked.

"I may not have heard much about this case," Inspector Crawford said grimly, "but I know what that is."

CHAPTER XIII

Holden turned round to find Celia.

She was now facing the tomb, but well back and to one side; she would not look into it All that sense of strangeness had gone.

"Celia dear ..."

"Can yon call me that?" asked Celia in a husky voice. "Can you even care anything at all about me? After tonight?"

"What in the world are you talking about?"

"I'm a beast," muttered Celia. "Oh, I am a beast!"

"Don't talk nonsense!" He took her shoulders and, in the dense shadow of the cypress, he kissed her. It was the same, the same as last night; nothing had changed. "But don't stay here!" he said. "Don't watch this. Go back to the house. It’ll only be bad for you if you stay."

"No!" urged Celia. "No. Please. Don't send me away. I have a reason. I—want to look in there now. I have a reason."

Both of them, then, became aware of an ominous silence.

Inspector Crawford and Dr. Fell still stood motionless on either side of the tomb door. Dr. Fell had stepped back, switching off his torch. The Inspector, though he still held the light steadily inside, stared at Dr. Fell with hard intensity. It was as though, curiously, they were duelists.

"Orders, sir?"

"Oh, ah!" Dr. Fell woke np with a snort and gurgle, returning the other's hard stare. "Yes. You'd better go in and fetch the bottle. Or," Dr. Fell added with sudden inexplicable ferocity, "are you afraid of the man who'll never fight another duel?"

"No, sir," returned Crawford with dignity.

"Please go and get it, then."

Celia and Holden watched him.

It was far from a pleasant job for Crawford. Once he had gone gingerly down those few steps, he seemed to feel he was outside the protected circle. He was exposed. He was in an arena, among ranged monsters.

Yet, as his own shoes made clear sharp-printed tracks in the thin layer of sand, he conscientiously stopped to note the fact. His light bobbed and flashed eerily. The beam of Dr. Fell's torch followed him. Searching for other tracks, finding none, Crawford moved toward the left-hand wall. There, in a niche some five feet above the new-gleaming coffin lying flat against the wall, was the brown bottle.

"Keep your light on me, sir." Crawford's voice boomed out of the vault. "I've got to shove my own torch into my pocket when I pick the thing up. Might be fingerprints. Better use two hands, or I may mess it up."

"All right. Steady!"

With his own light out, and only that yellow eye watching him from the door, Crawford nearly lost his nerve. Stretching up his hands, he pressed one hand over the top

"I say," he remarked. "Has anybody mentioned (anywhere?) that in the playroom at Caswall there's a toy printing press with three different kinds of colored type?"

"There certainly is," answered Celia. "Though how you knew that is more than I can think. But, Dr. Felll Please listenl What I wanted to ask you . . ."

"Does Thorley Marsh know about this printing press?"

"Yes! But..."

"Might I (harrumph) perhaps see it?"

"At any time you like. But, Dr. Fell! Please! You don't mean," Celia reached out and would have touched the bottle if Crawford had not stopped her, "you don't mean that’ s really it? The—real thing?"

The sheer bewilderment in her voice, the amazement which had been growing for some time, made the others stare.

"Lord, miss," exclaimed Crawford, "what did you expect?"

Celia was taken aback. "I . .."

"As I understand it, miss, you're the one who's been chasing this bottle. Then, when we find it, you sound as flabbergasted as though it had never existed. What did you expect?"

"I don't know. I spoke stupidly. Please forgive me."

"Inspector," gabbled Dr. Fell with fiery intensity, "the bit of luck here is that the cork is still in the bottle. Even if the stuff was in solution, if s possible traces will remain. Have you got access to a pathologist?"

"In Chippenham?" Crawford's tone rebuked him. "Best in England."

Calling on heaven for a notebook and a pencil, which he possessed himself but couldn't find, Dr. Fell was supplied by Holden with these articles. While Crawford held a light, Dr. Fell wrote two words on a sheet, tore it out, and handed it to the Inspector.

"Now!" he went on excitedly, stuffing Holden's notebook into his own pocket. "Get your pathologist to test for those two ingredients. The first in large quantity, the second in small. If . . ."

Crawford was frowning at the paper.

"But these, sir, are two very well-known poisons! Taken together, would they produce that effect on the poor lady?"

'Yes."

"Dr. Fell," interposed Holden, who could stand it no longer, "what are these infernal poisons? We've heard a lot about them, but nobody's said a word as to the name. I'm

fairly well up in such matters myself. What did Margot die of?"

"My dear boy," answered Dr. Fell, rubbing his forehead blankly, "there's nothing mysterious about it. Ifs quite simple. Ifs not a new dodge. The poison . . ."

"Listen!" interrupted Crawford. "Out with that light!"

Darkness and moonlight descended.

"There's somebody talking down by the church," whispered Crawford.

"Attend to me!" muttered Dr. Fell. His hand descended heavily on Holden's shoulder. "We must not be interrupted now. And they've got as much right here as we have. Go down and shoo 'em away. Spin any yarn you like; but get rid of 'em. Don't argue! Go!"

Holden went.

Just when he seemed closer to Celia than ever before, just when a glimmer of understanding was about to appear in this business, he was tom away.

But was it a glimmer of understanding?

Moving quickly and softly on the grass margin beside the pebbled path, through the maze of graves and trees, he faced what had to be faced. Inside a stone box, with no entrance except a door whose seal had not been tampered with, someone had executed a danse macabre among the coffins yet had left not a footprint in the sand.

The effect not merely puzzled; it stunned. It seemed to leave no loophole. That this was supernatural, supposing such forces to exist, Holden could not believe even when the spell of it was on his wits. Supernatural forces, presumably, do not concern themselves with poison bottles.

Yet how? It was . . .

Recognizing the two voices which were talking beside the church, he stopped softly at the line of beech trees.

In the path beside the church—just as he and Celia had stood in that unforgotten time; just as unhappy as he and Celia had been—stood Doris Locke and Ronnie Merrick.

They stood wide apart, as he and Celia had done. Moonlight filtered down on them through the leaves. Behind them loomed the church wall with its painted windows drained of color. Both had a tendency to stare at the ground and scuffle shoes.

". . . and that," Doris was just concluding a rapid recital, "is everything that's happened tonight I had to tell somebody or burst"