John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

Drawing out a chair of some discomfort, he sat down, adjusted his knees and his long legs, spun the cigarette-case into the air, caught it, and looked at them all with interest, as though he were awaiting applause for a conjuring-trick.

CHAPTER IX

I t was Masters who came into action now.

'Just one moment, sir!' tie warned, getting out his notebook and giving Chase that perfunctorily sinister look which a statement of this kind warranted. 'You say you saw Mr Pennik in Miss Keen's room on. Friday night?'

'Well, to be strictly accurate, I saw him come out of it,' Chase corrected himself. He spun the cigarette-case again.

'And when was this,-may I ask?'

'About a quarter to eight.'

'Oh? And yet we're given to understand, sir, that at about a quarter to eight Mr Pennik was downstairs opening the back door to Mrs Chichester and her son.'

·Yes, that's all right,' said Chase-He reflected. 'I'm pretty sure I heard the back doorbell start to ring as Pennik was barging down the stairs.'

Masters looked at him.

'Now, sir, you have already made a statement to Superintendent Belcher?'

'That's right. Good old Belcher. Cripes, what a name!' Evidently seeing that he had struck the wrong note, he suddenly became almost austere. His narrow shoulders went back. Behind everything you seemed to see curiosity twining; but though he continued to spin the cigarette-case in the air, his voice grew curt and businesslike. 'I gave the superintendent a statement, as you say. -Yes ?'

'Yet you didn't mention this to him.'

'No; why should I? It had nothing to do with poor old Sam's death. Besides -'

'If you don't mind,' said Masters, lifting a lordly hand. 'Just let me read you a part of your statement. You say: "At seven-thirty Mrs Constable asked me to show Pennik where the kitchen was, while the others went on upstairs, I showed him the kitchen, and the refrigerator, and so on, and then I went upstairs. I was not with him longer than a couple of minutes. Afterwards I was in my room dressing, and I did not leave it until I heard Mrs Constable scream at eight o'clock." '

'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?'