John Carr - The Reader Is Warned

'Everything is disorganized, I'm afraid,' he explained. "That's why you weren't met. We've had an accident.' 'An accident?'

'Yes. Mina and Hilary and Sam and I came down by train. So did our thought-reading friend Pennik. But the servants - all four of 'em - were driving down in Sam's car with all the luggage. The luggage was sent on to us; but not the servants, I'm afraid.'

'Not the servants ? Why not ?'

'Well, nobody seems to know. Hodges, that's Sam's chauffeur, evidently tried to take a curve on a hill too fast, and smacked into a lorry this side of Guildford. I don't understand it, because Hodges is the most careful driver I ever rode with.'

'You mean they're seriously -?'

'Oh no, nobody is seriously hurt. But bruises and shock at the least of it, that'll keep them there all night anyway. In the meantime, we haven't even got anybody to fry an egg. It's inconvenient. Much more inconvenient for them, of course, poor devils,' he added hastily.

'Much more,' agreed Hilary Keen. 'And I can fry an egg. How do you do, Dr Sanders?'

Sanders had been waiting to acknowledge the introduction. In this semi-gloom it was difficult to see her distinctly. Though she must have been about his own age, in the early thirties, she seemed far younger by reason of a sort of smooth and warm aliveness: an aliveness of body and mind and even voice. It was not that she conveyed the impression of being fragile, but only of being young. She was not a beauty, for she had no personality of beauty. Her blue eyes and dark brown bobbed hair were of such a conventional type that you might not have looked twice at her if it had not been for that aliveness of personality. But, once having looked, you studied her. In addition to this vitality, Sanders had seldom seen a person with more poise, or less restlessness of gesture. She sat by the rim of the fountain, wearing a plain dark frock; and you did not forget her presence.

Also, she had a very pleasant laugh.

'Odd,' Chase was going on in a ruminating tone, 'how lonely it seems in a house without servants. Odd - the six of us, shut up here over the week-end, with nobody to run the ship.'

‘Is it?' inquired Hilary. 'What's odd about it?'

Though she took up the challenge instantly, Sanders could sense the same atmosphere which Chase could perhaps not define himself. In a room opening off the conservatory he could hear a clock strike; it was as though the curtains of Fourways muffled them off from the world. Chase hesitated.

'Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm sharing the general tendency towards the psychic. And then poor old Sam will have a fit if the invaluable Parker isn't here to draw his bath or put in his cuff-links. - Hilary,' he added, with a swift and fluent turn of the subject, 'is in the same line of business as we are, my lad. She works for the Department of Public Prosecutions. She charges 'em with the crime; you cut 'em up; I defend or prosecute 'em. With luck. We're a fine parcel of ghouls, aren't we?'

'I suppose we are, really,' Hilary agreed with all seriousness. She appealed to Sanders. 'But - you're the friend of Sir Henry Merrivale, aren't you?'

'I'm one of them, anyhow.'

'And he is coming down here on Sunday, isn't he?'. 'Oh yes.'

'Hilary expects trouble with our friend the mind-reader,' said Chase. He spoke with a kind of expansive fondness, as though he were indulging a small girl.

'I am being accused of fads and fancies,' said Hilary, examining her finger-nails. 'Now let me ask you something; let me put a hypothetical case. Suppose this man is perfectly genuine. Suppose he has the power he says he has, and with the proper effort can read every thought in our heads like plain print. I don't necessarily admit he's genuine, though I never met a performance that made me feel quite so - so creepy. But, supposing him to be genuine, do you realize just what that would mean ?'

Sanders must have looked dubious, for she caught his look with as imperceptible a turn .as a fencer catches a thrust; there was in fact in her mind something of the quality of the swordsman. She smiled.

'Dr Sanders doesn't believe in mind-readers.'

'I don't know,' Sanders admitted honestly. 'But go on. Granting your hypothesis, what do we get?'

She stared at the fountain.

'I've been talking to Larry about a play called Dangerous Corner. The theme of the play, you may remember, is that in all conversations among friends or relatives there is a dangerous corner, where the most trivial word will turn the talk to disaster. Mostly we miss that comer; but sometimes the wheel skids by accident. Then a secret comes, out - about somebody. But, once you've turned that corner, you've got to keep on down the road. The exposure of that secret will lead to the exposure of another secret about somebody else, until one by one the real inner life of everybody is shown up; and the sight isn't pretty.

'That comer is dangerous enough. But it is a comer; it is taken by accident or chance. On the other hand, suppose you had somebody who took it deliberately, because he knew where it was and what it would lead to ? Suppose you had a person with a power to see into minds? To know every secret people were thinking about? The result doesn't bear thinking about in itself. Life would simply become intolerable, that's all. Now wouldn't it?'

She had been speaking quietly, in an explanatory way and without any emphasis on words. At the end she merely raised her eyes. Lawrence Chase looked surprised and doubtful (of her) and somewhat fretful.

'It's a bit too academic for me -'

'No, it isn't, Larry. You know that.'

'And I also begin to suspect, my girl, that you have a low mind.'

'Perhaps I have. I honestly don't know. But I notice that people always accuse you of having something wrong with your mind whenever you ask them to exercise theirs.'

'Of humanity in general, I mean,' said Chase. Hitherto he had been speaking with light good-humour, casting an eye at Sanders as though bidding him to listen to the girl. Now he drew himself up with such straightness that his .sharp shoulder-blades showed through the back of his coat. 'Right you are, then. We'll be desperately serious. Take the play you're talking about: if I remember correctly, before they finished digging out secrets they found that among them the characters had committed nearly every crime in the Decalogue. Hang it all! You don't seriously suggest that that would apply to any casual group of people, do you?'

'Oh, crime!' said Hilary, and smiled. 'Let me ask you something. Suppose every thought that came into your head in the course of one day were written down, and the whole thing read out to an assembled group of your friends.'

'God forbid!'

'You wouldn't like it?'

'I rather think I should prefer to be boiled in oil,' Chase declared reflectively.

'And yet you haven't committed any crime; any great crime, that is?' 'No. None that worries me, anyhow.' There was a silence.

'Oh, and another thing,' pursued Hilary, with a glow of pure mischief in her blue eyes. 'We can leave out crimes. We can even leave out your feminine conquests, or attempted conquests. You don't have to own up to the times you've seen a girl you rather liked, and invited her away somewhere, and thought, "That's nice; that'll be easy," when really you didn't know anything about her. People talk about "secrets," but usually all they mean is secrets about love-affairs or would-be love-affairs - '

'And usually they're quite right,' said Chase with candour. But even in the gloom you could see the blood come into his face.

'Well? Leaving out crime and all matters of sex, would you still -'

'No, look here!' interrupted Chase. 'This is going too far. We're supposed to be having an academic argument; not a game of Truth. Besides, why have my shortcomings and stupidities got to be pitched on? Would you like your thoughts for the course of a day to be paraded out in front of everybody?'

'I should hope not,' said Hilary fervently.

'Aha! Even apart from crime and sex, you've thought thoughts you wouldn't have known?'

'Yes.'

'In fact you've even thought thoughts about crime and sex?'

'Of course.'

'Well, that's all right, then,' said Chase, mollified. 'So, before the party becomes rowdy, suppose we drop the subject.'

'We can't drop it. That's just the point, don't you understand? You see how easy it is to start a thing like this going, just as we've been doing now. That's not because we're all criminals, but because we're all human. And it's why we've got to persuade Mina to get rid of this man Pennik.'

Chase hesitated, and Hilary turned to Sanders.

'He's going to make trouble,' Hilary said. 'I don't mean that his intentions are evil or that he's a mischief-maker. No. On the contrary, his intentions are good, and in that unassuming way of his he's rather charming -'

Then what are you worried about?' inquired Chase: though he himself looked far from at ease.

'Because that's just the whole difficulty. Unless he's a bigger charlatan than seems possible, he really believes in this gift of his. Under that mild exterior of his he would do anything, anything to convince people it was true. Particularly since Mr Constable -'

'Sam.'

'Sam, then. Particularly since Sam antagonizes him at every turn. You remember what happened when he gave that demonstration at their flat in town. Can't you imagine what he might do if he really chose to make trouble among a group like us? Or among any other group in the wide world? What do you say, Dr Sanders?'

It was growing darker in the glass-roofed room, hollow with the faint echo of the fountain and full of plants' that had turned to shadows. The orange-red square of the electric fire glowed more brightly. Sanders had begun to understand his invitation to Fourways.

He looked at Chase.

'Tell me,' he said. 'Was it your idea that H. M. and I should investigate this fellow? Find out whether or not he's a fake?'

Chase looked hurt.

'Oh, don't put it like that. Not at all! Both Sam and Mina particularly wanted to invite you.'

'Thanks. And, before we go into this, where are our hosts? I ought to present myself. Having barged in here -'

'That's all right. They're both out. They went over to Guildford to see how the servants were getting on, and to see whether they could dig up anybody to cook a scratch meal or attend to things generally. It's upset Mina, especially with another book on the way -' 'Another what on the way?'

'Book. You know.' Chase broke off. His eyes opened wide, and he knocked his knuckles against his forehead. 'Good Lord alive,' he said; 'you don't mean to say you don't know? I thought everybody knew.'

'Not when you are entrusted with telling it.'

'Mina Constable,' explained Chase, 'is really Mina Shields - the lady novelist, you know. And don't laugh.'

'Why the devil should I laugh?'

'I don't know,' Chase said gloomily, 'except that for some reason all lady novelists are supposed to be funny. Sort of dogma. Anyhow, Mina is a modern Marie Corelli. By that I don't mean anything pompous or flighty or on the preaching side: Mina is the best of good scouts, as you'll see. She may write romances about reincarnation in Egypt or Satan in the suburbs, but she's sound. When she wanted to do a novel about a temple in the middle of French Indo-China, -she didn't trust to the books; by George, she went to French Indo-China. That trip nearly killed Sam; and Mina too, for that matter. They both went down with malaria. Sam says he can't get warm even yet. Which is why they have these portable fires blazing in every room, and the place is like an oven. Don't open too many windows, or you'll have him on your neck.'