John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

'Miss Keen has been telling me -' Sanders began.

She cut him off.

'There was something in my room, and it frightened me. I ran in here by way of the balcony. Take a look at my hands, if you don't believe it. I'm awfully sorry about the lamp; I knocked it over when I climbed through the window.'

'It is of no consequence,' said Sam Constable, looking sly. 'Only I regret that something in your room frightened you. Mice, perhaps?'

'I -I don't know.'

'Not mice. If you remember, please tell me and I will have it seen to. Excuse me, then: I shall not intrude on you any longer.'

Sanders, realizing that if he joined in the explanations it would only give their host the opportunity to look more sly, did not comment. Constable was evidently beginning to realize the possibilities of triumph in the situation.

'By the way, Mr Constable,' he said, 'nobody has tried to murder you so far, I imagine?'

'Not as yet, Doctor. Not as yet, I am glad to say. The scrap-book remains on its shelf. Until dinner, then!'

Sanders stared at the closing door.

'Now just what did he mean by that?'

'By what?'

"The scrap-book remains on its shelf." '

'I haven't the remotest idea,' said Hilary. 'And at the moment I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It does seem as though the whole affair, so far, has been to put you into one embarrassing position after another.'

'Oh, that's all right - but the point is, what particular embarrassing position were you in a little while ago?'

She was quiet again, though the shock had left its aftermath and Sanders did not like the look of her. At times she would tremble, for no apparent reason.

'It's nothing. May I use your bathroom to wash in? I don't want to go back to my own room for a while.'

He gestured towards it, picking up the cigarette he had put down at her entrance. That sudden entrance, the look of her, had disturbed him in more ways than one. She was gone only a moment; and when she returned he noticed the strength of resolution about her chin. 'I really wanted time to think,' she explained. 'And I'm sorry, Dr Sanders, but I can't tell you anything about it. Believe me, things are heading for a smash here; and I'm not going to add my unimportant mite to the total. It was nothing -'

'It was definitely something. In plain' language, did somebody go for you?' 'I don't understand.' 'Don't you?'

'Well, not in the way you mean. It was something else.' She shivered. 'I suppose, as they say, that I simply can't take it. Looks shouldn't break any bones, should they? May I have a cigarette ?' She sat down in a padded chair; he gave her a cigarette and lighted it for her. For a time she blew smoke-rings. 'Shall I tell you what's wrong with all of us here, and why it's going to end in a way we won't like?'

'Well?'

'When I was a little girl, I had a book of stories I was very fond of; though some of them were rather frightening. They showed you a world where you could have everything you wanted, provided only some witch or wizard took a fancy to you. One of them was about a magic carpet, the usual kind of magic carpet. The sorcerer said to the boy who had it that it would carry him anywhere - with one proviso. While he was travelling on the carpet, he must never think of a cow. If he thought of a cow, the carpet would go to earth again.

'Now, there was no earthly reason why he should think of a cow. But, once he had been told he mustn't, all he could think about was that cow. Once he got it into his head, it never left him when he saw the carpet. No, I haven't taken leave of my senses. I didn't understand the psychology of that story then; I disliked the story, rather. But it's true. Because somebody says, "Here is a person who can read your thoughts," all you can think about is what you don't want anybody to know. We're all concentrating on what we don't want known; it won't leave our minds however we try.'

'But what of that?'

'Oh, don't be so - so virtuous!' Sanders considered this.

'I'm not trying to be virtuous, Lord knows,' he said. 'And I still don't understand. Aren't you making too much of this? I'm inclined to agree with Larry Chase: it would be damned uncomfortable to have all our thoughts known, but, after all, we're not a bunch of criminals.' ,

'Aren't we? Potentially ? I have a stepmother. I hate her. I wish she'd die. What do you say to that?'

'Only that it's not a very terrible secret.'

‘I want her money,' said Hilary relentlessly. 'Or, rather, my father's money that she has a life interest in. It's a real life interest in it; she married him when he was about Mr Constable's age. She isn't much older than I am, and hard as scrap-iron. I'm learning how to be hard too... Tell me: what do you think of our mind-reader, Mr Pennik?'

'I think he's a fake,' answered Sanders. Hilary, who had been staring hard at the cigarette, glanced up with surprise and something like alarm. There was relief in it, too, and a jumble of emotions he could not read. Yet he knew that in some superstitious corner of her soul she was being impelled into belief in the powers of Herman Pennik.

'Why do you say that? He read your thoughts.'

'Apparently. I've been thinking about that. I haven't worked it out, but it's just possible that a good part of the answer may lie with Larry Chase.'

'With Larry Chase ?' cried Hilary. 'How ?'

‘You know how he talks. He's interested in people. He will give you somebody's life history and afterwards tell you and quite sincerely believe himself that he hasn't said a word. I remember, now I come to think of it, that he knew or suspected something about - well, Marcia Blystone and things I'd rather not discuss. He mentioned it in a letter he wrote to me. If Pennik is an expert in pumping people and later making them forget they've been pumped ..

'But that wouldn't explain how Pennik would know when you might be thinking about something.'

'I'm not so sure. We'll grant that he is an expert psychologist. All successful fortune-tellers have to be.'

'What about that statue of Lister, or whoever it was? And -' Hilary hesitated. She did not look up. 'Excuse me for mentioning this, but what about the other thing he said? The last thing?'

'Lister I admit I don't understand. What you call the last thing may be merely because I haven't got as good a poker-face as I should like to have.'

Literally for minutes Hilary did not speak. Throwing her cigarette into the empty fireplace, she got up and measured out steps on the carpet.

'There's his prophecy about Mr Constable.'

'Mr Constable,' said Sanders politely, 'is not dead yet, you know. And even if Pennik can read minds, I'm hanged if I'll believe he can read the future.'

'But if the whole thing is a huge fraud -'

'I don't say it is. A certain degree of telepathic power may be quite possible. Pennik may merely be bolstering it up, as certain honest men have done in other things, by a little conscious fraud and a remarkable deductive ability.'

'Then you don't believe in thought as a physical weapon ?'

'I will go to my grave denying it.'

From two rooms away, Mina Constable began to scream when the hands of Sanders's watch stood at one minute to eight.

" There was an animal quality about those screams, one of almost physical pain rather than fright. Mina Constable seemed to be trying to scream and speak at the same time, so that all they could hear was the endless repetition of her husband's name. Hilary, her hand on the mantelpiece, turned round with a face of pure superstitious terror. But she could not stand the sound of those screams; and Sanders was afraid she would begin to cry out as well.

He had the door to the hall open while the noise was still going on. And he saw the scene he was so many times afterwards to describe.